Death Eaters Don't Cry
by Tsona
Summary: COMPLETE! Draco is given to LV after his rebirth and has the life of a DE he's always wanted, but struggles to find his place and to understand his relationship to the Dark Lord. Words fail everyone eventually. Then only actions- often desperate- suffice.
1. Hell Must Have Frozen Over

_A/N: Well, my dears, welcome to the first of a thus-far three-part series detailing the misadventures of our ferrety, young friend. I wrote this story between the release of books 4 and 5 (goodness me!) ten years ago (_GoF_ was first published in 2000 and it is now 2010), so, I fear, it must be dubbed an A.U., though I hesitate to use the term as, personally, I find it a turnoff. I mean only that some of my original ideas about how Jo's plot line might have gone must remain present here for this fanfic to exist at all, though admittedly, I did leave some things alone just because I preferred them (Malfoy Manor is not in Wiltshire, for instance, but on the coast of Northumberland). Just keep in mind that it does begin the September of the fifth year and that anything following that June before is, for our purposes, unknown. This is version 2.0, newly renovated to include the new tidbits from Ms. Rowling and also to tidy the plot (unlike Jo, I did not begin this with any idea of where it would head). Now, brave readers, read on!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

_Assent- and you are sane-_

_Demur- you're straightaway dangerous-_

_and handled with a Chain_

_-from "Much Madness is divinest Sense" by Emily Dickinson_

Draco Malfoy huddled on the bottom step, resting heavily on the solid, stone balustrade behind him, curled in the deep shade where the walls were too high, the passage too narrow so that it gave the illusion of a chasm, a pit with only a small stripe of dawn-grey sky visible above his head. His audible sigh left a cloud of mist that hung obstinately in the cold September morning air, the cold that sank deep into British blood and bone marrow, slowed the passage of time, even for Draco, who was used to Christmases on the Northumberland coast. His arms fastened tight about his body, clinging, shivering despite his long, woolen traveling cloak, the hood thrown over his feathery, blonde hair. Ice-grey eyes raked the frostbitten grounds, the dew made hard diamonds in the cold. His gaze lingered as it came to rest on the dark, dense pine forest scaling the steep mountain slopes that marked the bounds of the Dark Lord's conquered kingdom. He'd often studied that borderline, counted out the paces to its edge, scrutinized the terrain he'd have to travel, but he did not dare venture beyond this final step, arrested as if by a penitentiary wall. Even while he kept vigil here, the fang-like spires of Durmstrang Institute leered at him, bent, watching, waiting for his first _faux pas_ when they would stretch wide their mouths and let loose their monster to consume him.

Not that the Dark Lord was often there. Though, since he had disposed of Igor Karkaroff, he had proclaimed himself head of the Institute, the Dark Lord had found better ways to kill his time than in mentoring adolescents. Durmstrang had been left in the hands of his least important and less capable Death Eaters. Useless as they might be in this time of stealth warfare, they nevertheless reveled in pain and punishment and were more than able to subdue a rabble of teenagers and children.

At least in most cases. While terror and the threat of fewer opportunities placated most, Draco had been too often discovered meandering deserted, drafty corridors in the nighttime hours or stewing, as he was now, on the castle steps; the usual punishments had no effect on him and Durmstrang's new staff was running low on ideas, he could sense it. He was a special case. Special, first off, because he was Lucius Malfoy's son, and his father outranked and terrified them. Also, Draco had overheard them mutter, they thought him a head case, too moony, too solitary to be normal. Every so often, Draco had to agree.

Like now. Always, he'd professed a deep hatred, a hatred violent enough to be acted upon for that champion of Muggles and Mudbloods, Albus Dumbledore; Harry Potter, the Dark Lord's conqueror; that flea-bitten Weasley clan; that puffed-up, know-it-all Granger. Why then, _why_ were these the very people he found his mind turning to most often, with a greater and greater frequency? Why was it always with such favor?

_Wonder what they're doing now... those idiots, at home in their spacious, comfortable castle... allowed to wander where and when they choose... not watched like some sort of violent criminals... or mentally unstable loons... like us... Not ruled with torture... by punishment... with the threat of that dreadful_- he couldn't even quite get himself to _think_ the Dark Lord's name- Lord_ dangling over their heads like some bloody Sword of Damocles..._

The sun peeked up over the crest of the jagged-toothed mountains, peeped through the castle's turrets to strike the pines with its shaft, painting them a sudden, blinding green, transmuting the slow-rising, silver mists to gold. A frown pressed down on Draco's lips. Soon, the Death Eaters would be waking up, would go through the castle unlocking dormitory doors, pulling lethargic, bone-chilled students from their beds. He ought to return inside before he was caught sneaking out again, crept from his bed and along the hidden hallways known only to the house-elves and himself.

He pushed himself slowly onto feet numb with the cold, still shivering, drawing the folds of black-dyed vicuna wool around him, and began the slow, funereal march up the steps, through the passage of eternal night into an even darker shade, a not merely physical darkness that he feared with each passing day seeped deeper into his core, left its mark, tainted his blood as a potent poison always will, with tiny traces more than capable to overwhelm and consume like acid over time. The mere thought of it all made him hesitate on the landing, look back over his shoulder. But what was there to hope for? What help could be expected from a world that was wholly blind to his suffering? How could he escape to a world he couldn't even see? The swaying pines were on the Dark Lord's side, not his.

Draco's stiff fingers fastened around the heavy, wrought-iron handle and tugged one of the double, front doors open a mere crack perhaps, but wide enough for him to sidle through. The torches in their newly affixed brackets guttered in the draft. His eyes flew around the lofty entrance hall, spun upward to take in the four storeys of the castle, the unadorned stone of the walls, the many points at which the corridors opened in faintly pointed arches onto the entrance hall. All were dark and silent, and he let himself breathe a sigh before setting off across the flagstones, all too aware of the slap of his fur-lined boots.

As his feet hit the first of the stone steps, he was again assailed by the whirl of memories, the rising up of images of the castle corridors he was wont to traverse in days now lost to him. The hard stone of Durmstrang pressed against his feet; he missed the soft, almost velveteen suppleness of the marble that led to Hogwarts' upper storeys. At that other castle, as he climbed the steps, he might pass suits of armor, which might squeak as they turned to watch him pass. The portraits, absent here, might go about their daily business- drinking, feasting, or maybe even copying some long-forgotten manuscript, the secrets of which only that painting knew and could relate- or hail him as he passed. They would flit from frame to frame, chatting amiably to their neighbors, sharing the gossip with the rest of the school. The Durmstrang halls seemed particularly dead without the soft susurration of their voices; here only the icy draft whistling around a corner, the nearly inaudible hiss of the torch-flames, and the occasional, echoing stamp of a foot gave any clue that time had not ceased passing, leaving everything in a perpetual moment.

Currently, his own footfalls covered all other sounds. He might have been the lone survivor of some epic disaster. But he had only one more flight of steps to climb before he reached the safety of his dormitory; there was that to be said of having a mere four floors. Then, Goyle's grunting snores and Crabbe's incoherent mumbling would take over, would leave him with wide eyes staring through the fading dimness, awaiting the creaking opening of the door to announce the beginning of the day, the wheezy shout of Amycus Carrow to awaken them from their beds.

Draco kept his eyes fastened on the floor, watching the stones racing away beneath his feet, as he rounded the corner with some haste, for the light through the too high windows was already beginning to dissipate his veiling shadows, and ran headlong into something quite solid. He ricocheted backward and landed on the freezing flagstones with a muffled _thud_ that nonetheless echoed around the corridor. From this degrading position, he peered upward through a few, stray wisps of his blonde bangs. The hairs on the back of his neck, on his arms stood on end as an icy thrill went shivering down his spine. The Dark Lord himself was towering above Draco, his scarlet eyes bright in the dim light, glowing, piercing through the boy at his feet.

"_S-s-sir!_" Draco sputtered, his voice all but robbed in his astonishment and dread. It was fear too that drove him to clamber with all speed and no grace to his feet; on the ground he was a sitting target. Already he could feel a sword point resting against his throat, waiting.

"That's 'Master' to you, boy," the Dark Lord snarled. He lowered his wand and, with it, the shield he had thrown up to avoid the bodily collision. The glare of those cruel eyes made Draco shrink back, he was so unaccustomed to heat such as it radiated; it could not have more pronounced him vile, as a slug on one's sole. "Now," his high voice was as a poison dripped down Draco's throat, a few lethal drops of Veritaserum, "where were you? I was told those dorms were locked tight. How did you escape?"

That poison was ensnaring his heart, squeezing it tight, making it race, widening his eyes. "Wh-who-?"

"That's no concern of yours. _Answer me!_"

Draco was suddenly struck by a pain that threatened to buckle his knees. It felt as though a fist had just been rammed through his forehead and had snatched at a ribbon of thought, was unwinding it to read the memories imprinted there. The corridor, the Dark Lord suddenly dissolved, melted away to be replaced by another image. He was creeping from bed, lacing up his boots, donning his cloak. He was crossing the dark room by the moonlight. He was on his knees, pushing on the great stone in the wall, which swung inward to create a gaping hole through which he was able to slide.

Then, as suddenly as the torture had begun, the pain was lifted, leaving Draco gasping, staring at the hem of a black robe, nails digging into his thighs in an attempt to remain upright. The draft bit deep into him as it struck the beads of sweat that had begun to pearl along his hairline. His head spun; he felt faint.

"So..." The voice above him was high, harrowing like tiny, November raindrops against his skin. He looked up again through his hair, met the gleaming eyes in the skull-like face. "So, you discovered a secret passageway. Who showed you this?" the Dark Lord demanded. "Or," he added, sounding half-impressed by the conjecture, "did you find it on your own?"

Draco didn't want to answer, knew what a truthful answer would lead to, but the Dark Lord's poisonous voice, the effects of the Legilmency were still upon him and he felt the words being dragged up his throat, parting his lips. "The elves. The elves showed me."

"Indeed." A faint, vile amusement curled the tips of the his lipless mouth. "Well, they're easily taken care of. But first..." The Dark Lord's long fingers curled around Draco's wrist, viselike so that he could not twist free. Draco felt his skin cringe back from the contact as the Dark Lord wrenched him nearer, so that Draco could see himself reflected in the catlike pupils of the scarlet eyes. "To deal with you."

Draco was tugged again and found his feet scurrying in the Dark Lord's wake, back along the corridor, down the flights of steps. He did not dare ask where he was being taken as he stumbled along, his ankles licked by the airy material of the billowing robe. The Dark Lord dragged him all the way back down to the ground level and along the entrance hall to a door Draco had noticed before, but had found locked. It opened at the Dark Lord's touch and Draco was steered down a flight of stone steps, their surface slippery with a thick coat of dust that nearly silenced the slap of his boots. Once, he had to throw a hand out to catch at the stone of the wall to keep himself from tumbling, but withdrew his clutching fingers quickly; the stone burned like ice at this subterranean level.

Four levels down, the stairs ended in a passageway, dark as night. It was only when Draco, shivering, his wrist throbbing, his fingers numb in the Dark Lord's throttle, heard the click of a lock that he perceived that they stood beside a door and only by the squeal of the unused hinges that he knew that door had been opened.

The Dark Lord entered first, moving now at a slower pace. He hesitated, it seemed, then conjured such a bright light that Draco thought for a moment he would be blinded. Holding the ball of dancing, blue flames in his hand, the Dark Lord inspected the room, and Draco imitated him.

It made the rest of Durmstrang look like a Southern seaside spa. It was small, no larger than his mother's closet. The nearest thing to a window was a small, square hole in the inches thick wood of the door, spanned by iron bars. The only piece of furniture was a single bed, made of stone, set along the far wall; there was not even a bedside stand to rest a candle on. His breath rose as a dense fog in the light of the Dark Lord's flame. The air was heavy, stagnant, difficult to breathe. A rusted, iron peg stuck out of the wall and there was a long, copper line of rust trailing from it that looked to Draco suspiciously as if it had been left by a chain that had since been removed. Worse still was the a dark purple stain on the stone floor nearby; Draco did not like to think about what had probably caused it.

From above him, he heard the Dark Lord declare with a sanguine hiss, "It'll do."

"Do?" Draco was embarrassed to find his voice had climbed several octaves, shivered in the arctic air. "Do for what?"

The Dark Lord looked down upon him with a humorless leer. "Why, your new dorm."

"New dorm?" Draco repeated, all the breath seeming to have left him, frozen in his lungs. "It's a prison!"

"Ah, now I see why Snape assured me you were intelligent."

"I can't live here! I'll freeze!"

"You'll live," the Dark Lord said slowly, "wherever I tell you to. This afternoon, when you have finished with classes, you will return here. Tonight, I will come to lock you in. I will take no more chances with you, Draco, no..." He lifted a bony finger and traced it along Draco's cheek, like a glowing brand in its iciness, sending another shiver down his spine. "Lord Voldemort keeps his own..."

Draco became aware that the Dark Lord had released him, but rather than wanting to run, to ascend back up through the Stygian darkness to lighter planes, he merely wrapped himself in his arms, meek, hid himself in the folds of his cloak, and turned his gaze hellward.

"This is for your own benefit, you know that. Were I to allow you to do as you wish, to return into that Muggle-loving fool's power- yes, Draco," he added, for Draco had looked up, wide-eyed at the recognition; he had assumed that the Dark Lord had not so deeply penetrated his mind and had considered that the only reason he had not been killed outright, "don't think me ignorant- he would surely destroy you."

"But," Draco's eyes flew from one gleaming eye to the other, searching for an answer, "he didn't kill me before now. I lived in that castle for four years before-"

"There are things at work now that you do not understand, nor can you know yet. In time, I believe you will be ready, but now... I will see you tonight."

The Dark Lord turned to go, the small pool of shimmering, blue light haloing him.

Draco, alarmed, cried out, "May I have a light?"

The Dark Lord turned and the flickering fire illuminated the twisted grin on his lipless mouth. "Already you begin to view me more benevolently. Hold out your hand."

Draco hesitated, but at the Dark Lord's second, cooed urging, did as he was bidden. The Dark Lord lowered his own hand until it was a mere few inches above his own, then tipped it. The flames toppled out and Draco, by instinct, gasped and made to pull away. The Dark Lord, though, restrained him, grabbing his hand, viselike so that his most desperate efforts to escape proved fruitless, and holding it steady in his. The flames broke over his palm, roiled, and righted themselves. They continued to gleam with the same intensity, but did not burn, were not even warm. Rather their flickering tongues tickled his skin as Draco stared, amazed, into their depths.

"Remain with me," the Dark Lord crooned, "and I will teach you how to conjure these flames yourself."

He left, then, leaving the door wide behind him, expecting Draco to follow.

_A/N: So... that took some turns I wasn't expecting... This new Dark Lord is certainly interesting, isn't he? Please review!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	2. Everyone Gets Flustered Around Power

_A/N: One more chapter done, my friends. Sorry it took so long. I will share with you all, though, that while I did not reach the goal of 50,000 words this November, I feel my first Nanowrimo was a great success; I learned a lot, some of which I can hopefully work into this rewrite. That being said, I keep you from the long-expected party. Cheers!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

Draco slid into his seat beside Vincent Crabbe and trained his eyes toward the front of the classroom, but his mind was still down in the disused dungeon. _Remain with me and I will teach you to conjure these flames yourself._ Before he had left, he had deposited that fire on the floor, where it danced on. Its blue light was eerie, ghostly, painted his skin a deathlike color; he could still recall the tint. He glanced down, examining his hand once more. Above ground, the sunlight returned life to him, but would not burn away that other image. _Death_, he could recall his father saying as he had led him, shivering, past the marble impressions of his ancestors, through the several storeys of the Malfoy family crypt. _It is the only permanent punishment. Scars heal, suffering is forgotten, ruined reputations can be redeemed in a heartbeat, but death...._ Why had the Dark Lord not done away with him? Why merely isolate him?

"Where was you, Draco?"

Draco looked around and his eyes met Crabbe's, small and squinting, a sort of muddy brown below his pudding-bowl haircut; Gregory Goyle, sitting on his other side, leaned forward to see around his companion, his dark eyes bulging, curious but with only the merest glimmer denoting life.

"Carrow came by. You wasn' in the dorm," Crabbe continued, perhaps guessing from Draco's silence that he had not understood.

But he had; he merely didn't know how to respond. He was embarrassed as well as puzzled by the strange tuggings in his heart, the obsessions of his thoughts. Neither did he think it wise to spread the news of them around.

"Nose out, Crabbe," he spat, muttered. "Where I was is my business."

Crabbe stared at him, and for the merest moment, there was a flash of anger in his eyes, a spark at being spoken to like that, but it faded quickly to a glimmer of fear, as though he had realized whom he was threatening. He merely shrugged, poorly feigning passivity, and turned his attention back to the front.

What was Draco going to tell them? What explanation could he offer? The Dark Lord had not made it sound as though he'd be allowed back into the dormitory for some time. Perhaps he ought to ask the Dark Lord for some story to feed them all....

"Malfoy?"

Draco looked up again, this time to see the stooped, slight figure of Amycus Carrow's sister, Alecto.

She gave a horrible, little, wheezing giggle as he met her eyes, regarding her coolly, trying to disguise his disgust. She tottered a few steps nearer him and Draco fought the impulse to push back his chair. "Can you tell us what the worst punishment is for any enemy of the Dark Lord's?"

"I can," Theodore Nott offered with a slight rasp into Draco's hesitation, raising his eyes and his hand; Nott, though he often had the answers, rarely volunteered them, preferring to keep his head bowed over his hastily scribbled notes, which Draco had often upbraided him for keeping to himself. It was only since his arrival at Durmstrang that he had begun to be more vocal; Draco had preferred Theodore silent, but assumed that his father, an elderly Death Eater and wizard of some note, had not, and therefore did not petition for a return to his old ways.

Alecto turned towards Theodore, but neither of them could open their mouths before Draco pushed out the single word: "Death."

---

Theodore met Draco, flanked as usual by Crabbe and Goyle, as he was headed out of the classroom a slow, torturous hour later. "Well done back there," he murmured, matching Draco's step to stalk, slouched, beside him. "You had me worried for a minute. Thought you might not remember."

Draco looked at him evenly, his eyes searching Theodore's bright green ones. Did he really not understand? He acted as though this was just some other class, like they were back at Hogwarts, where a wrong answer, where forgetfulness cost no more than a failing grade or a detention at worst.

"Of course I remember," Draco muttered, snarled, biting back the desperate plea he would have preferred to loose. "That's not really something one can forget; it'd be like forgetting our own surnames...."

Theodore was in the process of a somewhat condescending nod when his eyes widened and he came to an abrupt halt, this action completely abandoned in favor of a slackened jaw and gawking stare.

"What?" Draco asked, stopping and looking up as well.

The Dark Lord was floating along the hall the way a dementor does, silent and moving as evenly as if on wheels. Children just let out from classes were falling back away from him to huddle along the stone walls and whisper to one another. As if he sensed Draco's even gaze, his scarlet eyes swung round and fastened onto him. His mouth curled upward and he made a beeline toward them. Draco and Theodore both waited in silence-- Theodore dropping into a bow-- and behind him, Draco could sense Crabbe and Goyle there too, dumbstruck.

"I see you found your way out of the dungeons," the Dark Lord said with a quirk of a smirk, addressing Draco and ignoring the other three almost entirely, his eyes merely scanning across them all before locking on Draco's again. Forgetting his genuflection somewhat, raising his head, Theodore's eyes flew round to goggle Draco.

"Yes, my lord."

The Dark Lord's lipless mouth twitched, for what reason Draco couldn't have explained. "And the light?"

"Is waiting for me when I return."

"Good."

"_Really!_" Alecto Carrow had just left the classroom and caught sight of this tableau. She tried to keep her voice firm and authoritative, but there was a titter of excitement behind it that betrayed her. The Dark Lord turned his smouldering eyes toward her and she quickly dropped hers to the boys; however thrilled she was to see him, it was clear his appearance did not leave her entirely at ease. "Really," she repeated, "what are you thinking? Bothering your lord...."

"They aren't bothering me," the Dark Lord corrected.

"Oh!" Alecto's pasty face flushed a burning red. "Well, then...."

"I will see you tonight, then," the Dark Lord said to Draco. Then, he turned to Alecto with a brusque, "Walk with me."

"You--" Theodore breathed when the two were out of earshot. "You-- he talked to you-- you spoke to him--"

Draco cut his eyes away. Theodore's emerald gaze was intense, a knife pressing into him, probing. "Yeah... I guess I did."

"What did he mean? 'See you tonight'?"

Draco began to walk away and felt the small huddle walk with him, match him step for step, Theodore still watching him with those intense eyes, keeping pace beside him.

"I won't be up to the dorm," Draco announced.

"Well, obviously not! You'll be with _the Dark Lord_!"

"Nott--" Draco spun round to meet his eyes, feeling that only by doing so would be able to communicate with the other boy, who was being unusually thick; Draco found this even more irritating than his customary patronizing cleverness. "I won't be coming up to the dorm. Not just tonight; I don't think I'm to be allowed to come up again."

"What?" It was Crabbe who had spoken, not Theodore. Theodore's jaw merely dropped again.

"Yes, I-- my dorm's been moved. To the dungeons."

"But-- I don' even know where they is! No one ever goes down there," Crabbe argued.

"Well, apparently I will be now. There's not much I can do about it. I'm being disciplined."

"For what?"

"Come on, Crabbe. You know; you asked me about it in class. You asked where I'd gone."

"Where was you then?"

"That's not the point. The point is I wasn't where I was expected to be."

"Is it-- is it bad down there?" Goyle this time, his deep, gruff grunt quavering.

Draco glanced over to him. "I-- I'm not sure what to make of it yet. It's cold, really cold.... and dark, and there's no way out. No windows, only one door, and the Dark Lord plans on locking that one himself."

"You're to live down in the dungeons?"

"Yes, Nott," Draco sighed, turning again.

"But... then you won' be wit' us..." Goyle whined.

"I think that's the point," Draco clarified wryly, trying to infuse humor into his voice as much to soothe himself as his companions. What would it be like to be alone at night? He supposed it would be like it always had been when he was at the Manor for breaks: lonely, worrisome without anyone else to keep a lookout.... But then, he reasoned, he had always been a light sleeper, and more often than not, having dorm-mates had been more of a nuisance than anything else. The thought gave him little comfort, particularly when he remembered the Dark Lord's skull-like face thrown into relief by the shimmering blue flames. If the light had made Draco seem dead, then it had made the Dark Lord seem something more... a ghost maybe, a mere impression of death rather than a physical manifestation. But no ghost had ever scared him so, not even Slytherin's silent Bloody Baron.

They had wandered into the Great Hall, following the well-known route, the concrete schedule. Draco, looking around the Spartan dining room, felt yet another pang of longing that, try though he might, he could not assuage. Whereas Hogwarts' had been enchanted to seem to open onto the sky, Durmstrang's low, stone ceiling merely made the whole building seem even more like a prison. Hogwarts' high slats near the rafters seemed like magical portals compared to the row of three small, square holes in the feet-thick wall behind the staff table that served as windows in this dining hall. As he eased himself onto a long bench at one of the rickety tables, two together smaller than any one table at Hogwarts, it was with a lowered head, that was not raised by the sight of the miserable, tasteless food that stood in place of Hogwarts' feasts.

"Maybe it won't be so bad?" Theodore suggested hopefully. It took Draco a moment to register that he was referring merely to the prospect of Draco's move to the dungeons.

"I suppose," Draco condoned. He glanced a little ways along the table. Cat Yaxley had just sat down on the opposite side of the trestle. "Are those mashed potatoes?"

Goyle swiped the greyish mash away just as Cat reached for it; she turned up her nose at his trollish manners with a "_humph!_" and awaited the return of the bowl, which between the four of them, they nearly emptied by half before Goyle replaced it.

---

After classes that evening-- they went as late as seven-thirty, Draco guessed, so as to prevent them from having any time to step outside the castle; it was pitch-dark by five o'clock-- Draco wolfed down a quick dinner before bidding his friends a solemn farewell and retracing the path to the dungeon room. The light of his wand's beam hardly seemed to pierce that Stygian darkness. What he could see, he didn't like. Frostbitten stones lined the passageway, too close to be comfortable, and his breath rose as a thick and lingering fog before him. Had he dared to look back, he wondered if he would have seen a trail of it following him, like the smoke from the Hogwarts Express' stacks. At least, though, holding the lighted wand aloft, he felt slightly more confident that he wouldn't slip on the steep, dust-carpeted steps.

He pushed wide the unlocked cell door and was so surprised by what he saw that he felt his jaw drop. Flickering, blue flames and the wand he had not dimmed illuminated a room so transformed that he hardly recognized it. From some forgotten corner, someone-- whoever had redecorated for him-- had dragged-- or more likely, magicked-- a large, ornately carved desk and pushed it up against the wall, blocking from view the rust stain from the chain. A torch bracket had been affixed above it and more of the blue flames danced in its cup. A large bookcase stood beside it; they could have been a matching set, except that the bookcase was not so embellished. A mattress covered the stone bed and had been made up with sheets and a downy quilt that Draco, scrutinizing it, had to admit would make a fair shield against the arctic cold of the subterranean room. His trunk too had been brought into the room and was set along the wall opposite the bookcase and desk.

"Do you like it?"

Draco spun around to see the faintly glowing, ruby embers of the Dark Lord's eyes, growing through the darkness of the corridor.

"I had the house-elves gather the furniture, though I told them what I wanted," he informed Draco as he slithered up to the doorway and the blue light fell across his skull-like features. His bloody eyes scanned his handiwork. "The desk--" he said, motioning toward it with a lazy, spidery hand "--comes from the headmaster's office. And the bookcase--" he gestured toward this as well "--from one of the dorm rooms. It was used by at least one pupil of note."

He swept into the room and passed Draco, who shuddered in his shadow. When he stood beside the bookcase, his eyes beckoned Draco forward. Reluctantly, he obeyed, his slow gait jittery, widely skirting the purple bloodstain on the floor, and the Dark Lord pointed one long finger at a mark carved into the ebony wood. "Do you recognize this?"

Draco peered at the symbol. It seemed at first to be a badly drawn eye, triangular in shape, with no more than a vertical line for a pupil, which Draco reminded himself, was not perhaps so far from reality as it could have been; the Dark Lord's snakelike pupils were vertical, after all. "I think I've seen it," Draco ventured after a moment. "Isn't it on one of the walls upstairs?"

"It is," the Dark Lord hissed. "They say Grindelwald himself carved that mark."

"Grindelwald? That wizard Dumbledore defeated?"

The Dark Lord nodded, watching Draco with keen eyes. "Gellert Grindelwald is now firmly shut away in his own prison of Nurmengard. _That_, Draco, is how your beloved Dumbledore deals with Dark wizards. I thought you might benefit from a daily reminder of that, particularly when Durmstrang so kindly yields one."

"But," Draco voiced hesitantly, "he's not... _dead_?"

The Dark Lord raised hairless brows. "No," he said simply. "Your Dumbledore believes he has found something worse than death; I can only imagine he subjects Grindelwald to this."

"_Worse _than _death?_"

The Dark Lord straightened with a nod and it was then that Draco noticed the leather-bound tome he bore in his left hand.

"What's that?" Draco asked, his curiosity getting ahead of his sense and eager for anything to wipe away the horrible thoughts of dreadful tortures that now chased themselves through his mind.

The Dark Lord leered as he peered down at the book. "The diary of a young Gellert Grindelwald." He held it out toward Draco, but Draco did not take it as he was clearly supposed to do.

"It must be really old. How did you get it?"

The Dark Lord nodded. "It is perhaps some one-hundred-ten years old. As to how I got it, his parents paid me dearly for it. When I had extracted all I could from them, it was clear they had no more use for this keepsake." He did not lower the tome, and when he saw that Draco still hesitated, added, "I am giving this to you, Draco, because I hope you will read it. In fact, I _expect_ you to read it and will be most displeased if I find you do not." He smiled lazily. "It would be an insult to the memory of Grindelwald's parents if you did not."

"Why would I-- why do _you_," he corrected himself as he took the tattered book a little hastily from the Dark Lord's hands, "want me to read Grindelwald's diary? He was defeated."

"I think you will find it useful," the Dark Lord stated and the curl of his mouth gave Draco the impression that the laconic statement veiled much more than it revealed. "After all, there is much to learn from the mistakes of the past, is there not, Draco, as well as the successes? You enjoy history, you enjoy reading, surely you have realized this; if you have not, your father and all of Hogwarts' teachers have failed in your education even more miserably than I expect them to have. Besides," he added and his voice took on an icy edge, lowered once more to a hiss, "it ought to be enough that I am asking."

Draco drew the book to his chest, his hands on either side of its mouldering cover, its heady aroma stealing into his nostrils, as a shiver stole down his spine. He lowered his eyes from the embers of the Dark Lord's, whether out of fright, humility, or shame he couldn't have said. "I'll read it," he promised succinctly.

"Good, for as I say, I expect it. Now," the Dark Lord said, his voice abruptly shifting back to silk, "I do believe I owe you a little more information about your... _accommodations_. I have told you before that I am taking no further chances with you, Draco. Each night, you will be locked in this room by me, and I will be placing enchantments around the door that will lift only at my touch. If you should try to remove them, or to undo the door in any other fashion," he continued and Draco had the impression, the dazed ache in his head that proved that he had just been the victim of Legilmency, "an alarm will sound and I will be summoned here immediately and you will find my mood quite... _unpleasant_. Do I make myself clear?"

Draco nodded, dazed by these rather extreme security measures. "As clear as crystal, I'm afraid."

The Dark Lord's bloody eyes swung round to pin Draco and for a moment flashed with fire. "You're _afraid_?" he repeated delicately. "Surely, you are not even now contemplating escape?"

Draco did not answer; there was no need for him too. His head began to reel and spin and he fought the urge to throw out a hand to keep from staggering, held himself rigid with the greatest difficulty. Through this haze, he heard the Dark Lord's soft chuckle. "Oh Draco," he crooned, "when will you learn that it is by far safer, more comfortable for you to simply obey me? Perhaps a reminder?"

Draco saw with a wave of nauseating terror the Dark Lord's long fingers reach into his pocket and withdraw the yew wand that inspired such fear. The Dark Lord began to raise the weapon, its tip toward Draco, but caught himself, mid-swoosh.

"No," he mused and the wand lowered; Draco breathed again, his first breath escaping in a sigh of relief. "No, I think not. Not for you. Not yet. You'll change your mind...." The Dark Lord kept the wand fisted in his hand, the most dreadful reminder Draco could envision, the one object he thought most likely to make him cower in its presence, but turned his eyes to the book against Draco's chest, then slowly let them rise to the boy's silent, blood-drained face. "Read the memoirs, Draco. And get some sleep. Until nine-thirty tomorrow night, then. I will be later than usual."

"Won't I see you in the morning?"

The Dark Lord blinked and a smile spread slowly across his mouth. "Perhaps." He turned, but Draco blurted out,

"Sir!"

The bloody eyes fastened onto him once more with a flaming glare. "Er," Draco murmured, remembering his previous rebuke, "_Master_?"

"Yes, Draco?"

His apparent vexation could not prevent the question from tumbling from Draco's lips. "What happened to the house-elves? After-- after they arranged all this?"

The Dark Lord smiled that horrible, sickening smile and his left hand absently ran along the smooth wood of his wand. "Oh, they got their comeuppance, Draco; don't think I forgot." With that he left and the door shut solidly behind him. Draco slunk near, but did not dare to touch the wood; he felt the heat of the Dark Lord's spell radiating through it, the shield he had put up.

So, he was firmly shut away, an outcast from even the outcasts of the Wizarding world now. And he held a copy of Gellert Grindelwald's memoirs, his own diary. Draco flicked the loose, leather cover open to the first page, headed by that same, strange, triangular eye, and began to read the tight, regimented script.

_I, Gellert Grindelwald, do here inscribe the story of my rise to power that to inspire others to work with me toward the Greater Good of the Wizarding world. Though my Quest began long ago, my conquest might be said to have truly begun with my visit to the home of the wandmaker Gregorovitch. While most wands choose their wizard, I am the wizard that chose my wand, from among the whole stock of the wise Gregorovitch, a wand more powerful than any. With this wand, I am invincible._

_A/N: Well now, this story is taking some interesting turns, and I've been enjoying them all. Please read and review, my friends! Hooray for Christmas break! Happy holidays, all, and a happy New Year too!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	3. A Hiss Through the Door

_A/N: All right, my friends. One final update before I'm back in school. Happy New Year!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

Draco lay stretched out on his side across Theodore Nott's bed in the dark dormitory, a hand propping up his head. His own bed, Draco had noticed as he'd entered the room, had been stripped, but left in place; when he had mentioned this, Theodore had opined that the Death Eaters left it there as some sort of grotesque warning to the rest of them; Goyle had said he hoped it meant Draco would be allowed back; Draco suspected Theodore's guess was closer, but had smiled hollowly rather than say anything. Theodore himself was now sitting with his knees drawn to his chin atop the pillow, while Crabbe and Goyle sat facing the two of them on Goyle's bed, which was beside Theodore's. Draco had suggested that the few minutes between their gobbled dinner and the locking of the dorms be used to talk and his companions had readily agreed.

"So," Theodore asked, his emerald eyes on the blonde-headed boy, "how is it?"

Draco's grey eyes scanned his, hesitated before offering any response, "It's not so bad as I expected." His gaze wandered away to travel over the familiar, Spartan dorm: the blank, stone walls and floor; the single slat of a window cut into the thick wall, hardly wide enough for Draco to stick a hand through and not long enough for his hand to hit open air, too tiny for any owl, except perhaps that tiny, squawking mosquito of Ron Weasley's. The lack of any light source save the weak glimmer of moonlight through that same gash that kept Draco from making any of his companions out as much more than shadows.

"And..." Theodore seemed to hesitate. The door opened, letting in a few more students. He pitched his voice to a nearly inaudible hiss as he returned his attention to Draco, "What... what did the Dark Lord...?"

Draco heaved a sigh and murmured back, "He just... just came in to lock the door. It wasn't anything exciting, Theo." Draco wasn't sure why he was spouting these lies except that he expected the Dark Lord wouldn't have liked him to discuss what had passed between them. He thought of the memoirs awaiting him on the ebony desktop. _I become too close with Albus, showed him too much of what I had learned. He became, with the death of his sister, not my ally as I had hoped, but my greatest threat, a threat beyond any other, and created from my own blunders...._

It was hard to tell in the dark, but Draco thought Theodore's shoulders had dropped some. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"What a letdown," Theodore muttered.

"Hey!"

The door had opened again. A short, stooped man, bearing a lit wand, came stumbling forward toward them all. The light fell across Draco, who blinked, shut his eyes against the blaze, and was thus unable to see his assailant.

"You're not supposed to be in here," the man wheezed. "Go on! Get! Shoo!"

" 'Shoo?' " Draco scoffed unable to contain a jeering chortle. "What am I now, a cat?"

There was a bang. The spell exploded against Draco like the smarting crack of a whip; Draco knew, though, that the spell was supposed to have tossed him into the air and up against the wall. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling at the man's pathetic wandwork. "All right, all right, Carrow. I'll clear out." He slid from the bed and looked down at his companions. He could see them all clearly now by the light of the Death Eater's wand. Each set of eyes was turned on him, including those of the boys he didn't know well, the few younger, older, and foreign ones who had been assigned to this room along with those "rescued" from Hogwarts. He nodded toward Theodore, Crabbe, and Goyle, but felt he was really gesturing to the whole congregation.

"You-- you said you'd go. I-- I don't have all night, Malfoy."

"Yeah, yeah," Draco sneered. He added a quiet, "See you in the morning," to the trio before him, then prowled from the room ahead of Carrow.

At the base of the winding stair that led from the dorm rooms, he slowed his footsteps. There was still another hour and half until he had to be in his own room. What should he do with himself? He had just decided to head for the library to research a paper he had to write on untraceable poisons, when the Dark Mark seared on his arm. He bit back a yell that escaped in a soft hiss; another, high-pitched yelped echoed down the spiral stairwell. Draco's hand flew to cover the tattoo as he stood paralyzed by the pain, by the fright. His mind ground down to the speed of flowing molasses, his whole being consumed with it.

He watched through watering eyes as Carrow, clutching his own left forearm, flew off the steps and down the corridor. Had it been his shout Draco had heard? He took a few stumbling steps after the Death Eater; the pain eased a little. He took a few more, and to his wonderment, the pain lessened still more. He needed no further bidding; he took off after Amycus Carrow.

The tattoo of the Dark Mark-- the Dark Lord's sign of a skull with a serpent protruding from its grotesquely hanging mouth-- had been inscribed in red ink on his skin as long as he could remember-- his father had once deigned to mention that it had been their since he had been in his bassinet-- but rather than bearing the Mark as a badge of honor as most Death Eaters seemed to and as the Dark Lord had expected, he felt it merely as a burden. Unable to bare his arms for fear of its being discovered, he was forced to wear long sleeves even in the midst of summer's heat. Then, several times since the Dark Lord's rise this June, the Mark had burned with such heat he had been forced to hunker down wherever he was and wait for the pain to subside; this was the first time he had found any remedy.

He lost the faint echo of Carrow's footsteps as he gained the first floor. The Mark still throbbed on his arm, though no where near as intensely now. Should he settle down on the steps here? Should he descend to his dungeon room? Or should he hope for an even greater cure?

He took a few hesitant steps toward the widest of Durmstrang's stone staircases and more of the pain seemed to drain away. Each step he descended seemed to calm the Mark's fire until its heat was no more than embers fighting to keep alive, negligible, easily ignored, and Draco breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Grinning, he looked around to determine what was causing this strange effect and noticed the door of the Great Hall slightly ajar and loosing a ray of golden firelight that striped the flagstones of the entrance hall.

He left the stairs and tiptoed across the hall, keeping in the shadows. He was concentrating so hard on being noiseless himself that a quiet _pop_ from inside the dining room seemed as of a firecracker being let off to him and made him leap. His frightened stillness as he waited to see if anyone had heard the crash of his landing and would come investigating, for his heart to cease pounding against his ribs, and his breath to slow to its normal rate made it possible for him to hear the sibilance through the open door. "Late, Severus?"

"My lord," came another familiar voice-- that of the Potions master of Hogwarts-- through the door. "I was with Dumbledore and had to obtain his permission and blessing before I could come."

The Dark Lord let out a furious, serpentine hiss.

"Had I not," Snape continued as though his master had not spoken, "I should have blown my cover. I could not appear eager to arrive at your side."

In the silence that tautened the air of the room beyond, Draco sidled up beside the oaken door, edged along it until he was nearly pressed against the wall and could watch the room beyond through the negligible chink between it and the frozen stones.

All the tables and benches had been pushed up against the wall and, in their place, a ring of black-robed and masked wizards and witches had convened. The Dark Lord stood at their center; his was the only face uncovered. Even from this distance, Draco could feel the lash of heat from his bloody eyes as he stared hard into the mask of a Death Eater whose back was to Draco; that same stare sent a fissure around the circle, though the one Death Eater at whom it was directed did not so much as flinch.

"A wise choice, my slippery friend." Another slight pause followed before the Dark Lord spoke again, this time releasing a sharp command: "Report to me."

"Dumbledore has not yet discovered your efforts to infiltrate the boy, though I think he is beginning to suspect. He keeps himself at a great distance from Potter."

"And the boy himself?"

"Is as thickheaded as ever. He has not yet begun to suspect anything, thinks he is experiencing perfectly _normal_ nightmares." Draco heard the contempt sliding like venom from Snape's tongue. "Meanwhile, he feels abandoned by his hero, is turning bitter toward him. The doddering old fool," he sneered and Draco could hear his grim smile, "helps us without ever expecting it."

A horrible smile twisted the Dark Lord's features to match Snape's. "Yes, this does rather make up for your being late. I expect you were--"

"In the midst of making one final survey of the situation, just to ensure I knew how things stood. You know how swift to change the fool's mind is."

The Dark Lord laughed softly and the gravely sound sent a shiver along Draco's spine even as it grated against his ears. "Thorough as ever, Severus."

"Lucius!" The Dark Lord turned away and Draco, his heart hammering a swift tattoo against his chest again, whipped back away from the crack. He was shaking. His knees felt weak, so he allowed himself to slide down to the floor, rather than risk falling into the door, though his body remained taut, rigid. He had not had to face his father since his first day at Durmstrang. The sudden image of him, bowed almost double, arms spread wide for balance, in a dim office upstairs flashed across his eyes; it was how he had last seen him as he had backed out of the room, leaving Draco alone with the Dark Lord.

"How goes it with the Minister?" the Dark Lord now asked softly, presumably of Draco's father.

Lucius Malfoy's answer came swiftly, liked an oiled steam-engine. "My lord, all goes exactly as you planned it. Fudge becomes everyday more paranoid of Dumbledore, and Potter too, fed on your lies. Since the boy's escape from him two weeks ago, he has come to imagine Potter tangled up in Dumbledore's supposed schemes, to see them as a team, believes he must bring both down before he can feel secure in his position."

"And have you yet deduced who sent the dementors for the boy?"

"No, my lord, that I have been unable to discover."

The Dark Lord turned slowly back around. "Severus, I know the Order of the Phoenix is seeking an answer to this same query."

"And come no nearer to an answer than Lucius, my lord. Whoever it was has covered their tracks nicely."

"Perhaps I should recruit this person when I find him," the Dark Lord muttered wryly.

"I fear, my lord, that if it was indeed someone from the Ministry-- no doubt-- he'll have already heard of your return. If he had been willing to cooperate with you, doubtless he'd already be here."

"My lord," Draco's father piped up and the Dark Lord returned slowly to him; Draco noticed Lucius kept his eyes on the hem of his neighbor's robe even as he addressed the wizard in front of him. "My lord, no one but the Minister's top officials would have any idea, not with Fudge keeping everything so silent for you. This person might yet be willing--"

"I believe otherwise," Snape sneered. "I witnessed Amos Diggory's mortification at the death of his son. I doubt he's kept silent, regardless of whatever he's promised the Minister."

"Amos Diggory," Lucius shot back, "has let himself go; I saw him just the other day. The word of an unkempt squaller will hardly be taken seriously."

"Amos Diggory has not spoken to anyone, even in his own department," said a soft voice rather like the hiss of an ax along a grindstone.

"Thank you, Macnair."

The Death Eater standing beside Draco's father nodded; Lucius' head swiveled round toward him and Draco was almost certain he heard his father echo the Dark Lord's words in a formal whisper.

"And," the Death Eater, Macnair, added, perhaps spurred by these expressions of gratitude, "there's rumor in the department that he will soon be sacked."

"Doubtless you want me to assure you his position, Macnair?"

"Well," Macnair muttered, "the thought _had_ crossed my mind, my lord."

"Fool!" the Dark Lord spat and the Death Eater cringed back. "You know I can do no such thing, _will_ do no such thing. Although--" the change in his tone seemed to give Macnair hope; at any rate, he uncoiled himself from his cower "--you're parley with the giants was quite a victory for me. Perhaps it does merit some reward.... But _you, Walden_," he roared again, "are not the one to decide your prize; do not think yourself so mighty or so beloved, understood?"

"Y--y--yes, my lord."

"When can they be here? The giants?"

"They wait only on your signal, my lord," Walden Macnair squeaked. "I--I could go now, if you--"

"_Imbecile!_ We are waging a war of _stealth_! Do you really think I want to call forward _giants_ to go and ruin all my best-laid plans? When one or two among you might be able to not make a total fiasco of the affair?"

Every Death Eater now seemed to be shrinking back away from him. The Dark Lord paced inside the ring, his bloody eyes swinging from mask to mask among the circle, each figure cringing away as his gaze lighted on him.

"Too long... too long have I been foiled. Some mistakes have been my own, that I admit and have admitted to you all, but _most_ errors were made by my Death Eaters, by those who have sworn _allegiance_ to me. I have even been forced to wonder whether some among my _faithful_ friends might be seeking to overthrow me in secret, whether so many blunders can possibly be made by mere _mistake_. I don't want to be disappointed in you, my friends, the Devil knows I don't want that, but you do make me wonder...."

"My-- my lord," came a Death Eater's creaking voice from among the ring; Draco thought it might have been Thanatos Nott, Theodore's wizened father, as the stooped man stumped forward. "My lord-- we-- not one of us that I know of would _ever_ seek to supplant you. It is the dearest wish of us all that--"

"Do you wish to speak for the whole party, Nott? Do you wish to take the blame yourself if ever I should prove your assurance false?"

"N--no, my lord! I simply meant--"

"If you will not bear the responsibility of others, Nott, then do not speak for them and let me discover each traitor unhampered by your worthless promises. I know your ilk."

Draco thought he caught the fiery draft of the Dark Lord's dark stare and shuddered again, pulled himself swiftly behind the oaken shield of the door. He could have sworn for a moment, the Dark Lord's bloody eyes had stared directly at him.

In a sudden, loud silence that followed this cry, Draco chanced to move again to the chink. The Dark Lord had stopped pacing and all eyes were upon him. He shut his eyes, might have released an irritated breath. "I've heard enough," he pronounced. "I can take no more tonight. But--" his eyes opened again, were still blazing as he stared toward Draco's cache; that look froze Draco to the blood marrow, kept him rooted in place, staring right back, even as a shudder rattled his whole frame "--I need to make one final announcement before I can dismiss you all."

He turned away, much to Draco's relief and said to the group at large, "Doubtless, some of you might have questioned why I chose to move our meeting place tonight to a building so well-guarded, a room it takes considerable magic to shift the enchantments off of even for the few minutes it ought to take you all to get to my side." Here, he broke off for a moment to glare at Snape, who ducked his head. "It was a test. I plan to move into Durmstrang more permanently from this night forward."

There was an immediate outburst of muttering at this announcement. Draco thought he heard Amycus or Alecto Carrow's wheezy giggle above the hubbub.

One of the Death Eater's stepped boldly forward from the ring. "My lord," came Lucius Malfoy's oily tones, "why? What keeps you here when plans are already in effect in England?"

The Dark Lord glared at him. "You of all people ought to know, Lucius." Draco ducked as the bloody eyes spun toward him again. "Besides," came the serpentine hiss, "I believe I have already told you tonight that distance seems to make no difference to my plans, haven't I, Lucius?"

"Of-- of course, my lord." He knew enough this time to leave his response at this and retreated, bowing low, into the circle once more.

"Fine, then. Off, all of you. I have business to attend to here." He raised his wand and Draco felt a great rush of air charge past him, throwing him up against the wood, knocking his head against the stone corner of the wall with, he feared, an audible crash. But if the Death Eaters had noticed, they did nothing. They were all bent over themselves as their robes billowed around him, making them so many miniature, black tornados; several masks were torn from faces, were only just caught out of the air by desperately groping hands. Suddenly, the tempest ceased and all were left panting; Draco tried to blink the stars from his eyes.

"Go quickly," the Dark Lord commanded.

Automatically, Draco heard a number of _pops_ and _cracks_ of Disapparaters.

Draco was surprised to hear his father's voice following this crackle, having expected him to have obeyed his master. "Do you want me come along to add my, er, _particular_ branch of--"

"That won't be necessary; I think I can handle this myself," the Dark Lord interrupted brusquely. "Go, Lucius."

His father's _pop_ answered swiftly, a sharp "Wait here. Ten minutes," was given to the select few who were educators at the school, then there was only the sight of the noiseless apparition, the Dark Lord striding toward the door to the Great Hall, toward Draco.

_A/N: Well, my friends, there you are. Please let me know what you thought, what you liked and disliked, and any improvements you might be able to offer me. I feel as though this chapter ought to have been stronger-- probably its a lack of physical action that really can't likely be helped. This I fear was the best I was able to do; now it's up to you, my reader-editors. Thank you in advance! I feel I ought to mention a thank you too to the characters who wrote that chapter, namely everyone already mentioned._

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	4. Can a Frostbitten Heart Melt?

_A/N: This turned out to be quite a good chapter, I think. I hope you feel the same way. Enjoy!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

Draco was seated on the floor, looking up into the flaming eyes of the Dark Lord. Those eyes captured his gaze, held him spellbound, nailed to the floor, kept him from bolting in fear as he felt the Dark Lord's anger lap against him, against his curled legs and chest, his covered arms, his face, lifting his hair. The lipless mouth curled back in a sneer as he raised his wand once more with a snarl of, "_You._"

It was as if an explosion had taken place, as if that single word had been the incantation needed to spring a weapon unlike any seen before by Wizardkind. The air, the great shield of enchantments that the last spell had displaced flooded back into the Great Hall, crashed down upon it from the ceiling with all the strength of a tsunami. A cruel wind whipped past Draco, cowering in the adjacent atrium, roared in his ears and tore at his body, as everything fought to return to its proper place. The force of the blast threw Draco, evidently not in the right place either, to the floor, spread on his stomach by the Dark Lord's feet, all the wind ripped from his lungs, leaving him panting as the crash of the maelstrom faded away to a hanging, heavy silence.

Draco struggled upright through the stillness, through the burdening weight of the still agitated and trembling air.

"How _dare_ you!" the Dark Lord hissed above him. "Did you think," he continued as Draco pushed himself onto his knees, clawed the tangled down of windswept hair from his eyes, "that I would not notice you? Did you think you remained ensconced here behind this meager wood barrier? You? Who I have watched even from the forests of Albania, who I have--"

The Dark Lord's fury seemed evidently boiled beyond words as Draco turned his glare on him, head still lowered, peering up through his bangs.

"If it bothered you," Draco growled, "why didn't you stop me?"

The Dark Lord drew in a breath that was a serpent's hiss. The two pairs of eyes, boiling red and smouldering grey, stared one into the other and the moments lengthened. "I'm stopping you now."

"After everything's over. If you didn't want me to hear-- If you knew I was there--"

A moment's pause gave way to raised, hairless eyebrows and the assertion, "You _are_ impertinent."

Draco thought the Dark Lord seemed mildly taken-aback and the idea bore a smirk. "I've been told that." He clambered to his feet, stood before the monster with all the strength and courage that threat and danger always mustered inside of him.

"You make no apologies, then? No cringing excuses?"

"I can't be anything other than I am."

The breath was released in another low hiss that ended as a sibilant chuckle. The long, white fingers reached out, ran along the smooth plane of the boy's cheek. Draco shivered and shut his eyes against the contact; the deathly cold of the man's touch was unbearable, a razor of flame sent to sear scars across his own skin, tear it deep down to the muscle. He used his wand hand and, even with closed lids, Draco felt the rod pass across his face as a fiery draft; he did not dare move for dread of brushing against its wood.

"Ah," the man above him sighed. "Fear."

Draco cracked open his eyes to look into the twisted grin of the skeletal face. The spidery fingers snapped shut around the back of his neck and Draco, burned by the contact, netted by blind panic, had to bite his lip to keep from shouting aloud.

The skull-like face lowered, slunk near to him; he tried to still the quivers of his own body, the tremors that betrayed him. The whisper from the lipless mouth tickled his ear, sent a shiver rattling down his spine. "You are right to fear."

The hand, still clenched around his nape, dragged him cruelly round, forcing his body to follow, then shoved him roughly forward, causing his feet to stumble. The point of his wand found a nest in between two of his vertebrae, dug deep into his spine. Struggling with each step, yet powerless to prevent his own blundering feet, Draco was steered to the dungeon door; down the steep, slippery, unlit steps; then along the passageway at its foot, illuminated now by the ghostly light from the flames he had left to burn in the room at the hall's end.

As the Dark Lord shoved him through the door, past the fine furniture he had had imported, Draco was still trying to wriggle free, was attempting to throw off his captor, but his head was bowed, his shoulders upraised, and even as he struggled, he knew he had already lost the battle, had lost long ago, too long ago to recall, before he knew he wanted to fight, before he could have. The Dark Lord's wand hand snatched at the neck of his robes; the carelessly brandished wand brushed against Draco's face, seared his skin, unstoppered the bottled shout. He was whirled round and thrown roughly toward the bed; his arms flailed foolishly, ridiculously as he tried to regain his balance. Draco's legs hit the stone base and buckled sending him toppling onto the mattress. He was curled in upon himself, shuddering, as the wand rose, the weapon's tip trained on the cringing boy below it, arms thrown up over his head.

The Dark Lord paused to raise his slitted, flat nose to the air, to breathe in the stale, arctic air, the mist cloud of Draco's heavy pants. The twisted smile rose once more through the angry mask to contort his white face. "Down here, Draco," the Dark Lord crooned, red eyes fastened on the grey, peeping out from between Draco's arms, "if I choose to torture you, it's true, no one would hear you scream...."

The wand slashed through the air and struck Draco, paralyzed him before he could dodge it, before he could have contemplated a response. His body went rigid, his limbs drawing tight to his chest, everything quaking, racked with pain, each nerve, each bone on fire, shouting, as he was, for release. But he knew it would pass, even as a dark cloud began to creep toward the edges of his brain.

He was staring up at the rough stones of the ceiling-- or was it the floor? the wall? He felt a wave of sickness billow up inside him, rear toward the surface, but fought it back, panted through it, forcing it down. Sweat had beaded across his flesh, quickly freezing in the subterranean prison. He was still shivering.

A sour, muttered, spat swear reared above the sound of his tattered breathing. Draco's eyes flicked sideways in time to see the Dark Lord's head, shoulders, arm, wand fall. Bloody eyes trained on the floor, he hissed, even his voice drooping wearily, "What am I to do with you, my Draco?"

Draco did not, could not respond, tried to command his own aching limbs, force his body upright and failed.

The Dark Lord went on. "I cannot continue to let your mischief, your effrontery go unchecked, unpunished and yet...." The skull-like face loomed into view over a still paralyzed, still trembling Draco. The scarlet eyes that met his were softened somehow, a lingering sheen, the merest flicker in their usually burning depths; Draco could not place the emotion, the source; his every effort of mind was centered on regaining control, too occupied to ponder other matters. The spidery, white fingers reached out, their icicle tips brushed against his cheek, scraped along the plane with their butterfly touch, the red eyes still fixed on the grey, ignoring the grimace of pain that Draco could not contain, that wedged shut his eyes.

"I don't like to hurt you, Draco. I don't like being driven to do so. Why do you drive me to it?" The fingers curled around his pointed chin, clamped upon the jawbone, and forced his heavy head from the mattress.

Draco opened his eyes to meet the Dark Lord's. "D--d--don't," he managed to stammer.

"Don't drive me to it?" The fingers tensed, tightened. "What, then, is the purpose of your deviant behavior, Draco? Tell me that."

"Don't-- don't mean--"

"To misbehave?"

Draco tried to nod, but it hurt, sent a spurt of flame along in his spine, rocketing into his skull to blind his brain. He cried out, moaned weakly. A shiver rattled him again; his fingers tingled, twitched.

A soft cackle broke from the Dark Lord's throat. "I'd think," he opined, whispered, "you'd be better able to fight the spell's effects, Draco. I'd think, with all your practice...."

"You-- you know about--?"

"Of course I know!" the Dark Lord cried impatiently. "Haven't I been telling you? I've _watched_ you, Draco!"

His eyes flashed and burrowed deep into Draco and Draco found his already heavy head beginning to spin, the Pensieve of his thoughts to grow murky, to cloud and coalesce.

He was staring at a pair of polished, black shoes, his panted, ragged breaths fogging up their shined toes. Everything ached, his head felt cracked; he wouldn't have been at all surprised to find blood stiffening his downy hair. The stones of the floor added an extra prod to his already yelping bones. His vision was out of focus.

"Do you realize what you could have done, boy?" the man was shouting. "Do you have any idea? You could have ruined everything! What would happen to you if I were to end up in Azkaban? How dense are you? How thick is your skull? How do I have to phrase it to get you to understand? What will make you remember the instructions I give you?"

The curse pummeled him once more, relit the fire in his bones that had been trying to gutter out.

And then he was back in this time and his own screams were cut to a sudden silence. His body had slumped weakly, but icy fingers pushed against his chin, held up his head, and it was the Dark Lord's red eyes he regarded, not his own tortured image reflected on his father's toes. The spidery fingers were tight, squeezed with his exasperation, and their pressure evoked another bout of the Cruciatus Curse, a spike that scored Draco's body, shoved the withdrawn knives back through his flesh. Another yelp rammed through his defenses, broke the line of his lips.

The harsh lines of the Dark Lord's angular mask softened as the shout rent through the arctic air. The fingers relinquished their hold so his arm could slide beneath Draco's shoulders, gently bearing his weight, and through Draco's groans, through the sharp pains in his smouldering bones, push him upright, lean him back against the wall; then he retreated. The wand twirled through the air once more; Draco's cringed, shut his eyes against the coming torture, only to open them again as one of the biting hands closed on his neck, supported his head as the cool, smooth lip of a silver chalice touched his lips and the Dark Lord tipped a soothingly chill drink into his mouth. The liquid seemed to rush straight to the embers of the curse, douse the flames that tormented him.

"Better?"

Draco nodded. "Much." He managed to answer the bloody gaze with a weak smile, but Draco's eyes were restless, kept tabs on the unsheathed wand, lingering too nearby, clasped by the same hand that held the potion.

"He can't hurt you here, Draco. I hope you realize that. So long as you take shelter behind me, he won't touch you."

"You can. You do," Draco argued.

"But I am not him. I am merciful. I bear you no grudge. I punish only individual crimes, not your existence. In fact, I welcome your existence, your presence, embrace it."

Draco's eyes opened a bit wider, flicked back and forth between the two rubies of the Dark Lord's, uneasy, uncertain. But the Dark Lord's gaze did not waver under such scrutiny. "You-- you do? Why?"

A small chortle parted the Dark Lord's lipless mouth, the fingers lazily brushing against the side of Draco's face once more. "So inquisitive."

"Why?" Draco demanded again, determined not to be put off but such ploys, even as he shuddered at the icy touch, cringed away, unable to hide his own weakness.

The Dark Lord settled himself, the laugh dying to be replaced by cold solemnity. "I need you, Draco. Need you as your own father never did."

"Need me? What could you possibly need me for? When you've hordes of Death Eaters at your disposal, panting to follow your every ridiculous whim?"

A frown creased the Dark Lord's mouth as he pressed his hand against Draco's cheek, an icy brand, firm, unyielding, the spidery fingers snatching at the ends of his hair, burrowing into the down. "Fools, Draco. Power-hungry idiots. Not you. You don't try, you don't need to."

Draco hesitated, dropping his gaze to his lap, to his own hands dangling uselessly between his legs. "I don't try," he mumbled, "because there's no point. Why? What more have I got than any of this rabble? The ones you have _or_ the ones you'll be getting?"

"You have much, Draco. You have what they could only dream of, what most of them would be unable even to imagine."

Draco looked up to meet the fiery gaze; his head felt heavy, the weight of his confession pulling it back down in shame. "Whatever I've ever had, my father's lent to me. None of it was ever mine."

"Some things he cannot retract, even if he wished, as he often does."

"You're being cryptic," Draco complained, but this hazy talk had cheered him nonetheless, sent a smile spreading across his features, despite his attempts to quell it, to disguise it behind a mask. Whatever object the Dark Lord spoke of glowed like an amulet inside his chest, warming him from the inside out. Though he'd never have admitted it to anyone, he knew where his power, his wealth, his everything came from, knew it was not his to keep-- perhaps to inherit one day, but even then, what he had would pass from his hands to whatever Malfoy would follow him. He'd never felt before that there was anything he could truly claim as his own; even his own life seemed borrowed, too conditional, with too many expectations to have been the gift storybooks spoke of. Draco found it didn't matter to him what this hinted at largess was, or even if it had been made up for his benefit; it was merely an idea to cling to, a rope he could use to pull himself from the deepest mud pits.

The Dark Lord was regarding him, his gaze steady, the rubies glittering, and a small quirk pulling at the corners of his mouth, as though he too were trying to force down a smile; the idea only made Draco grin all the broader. For one wild instant, he had the urge to reach out, to say something, anything to show his gratitude to this man he'd have called a monster not more than a quarter of an hour earlier. Only his indecision, his inability to decide what the Dark Lord would appreciate held him back, made him hesitate long enough that, with a soft sigh like a hiss, a breath of wind, the Dark Lord stood straight, stepped back, away from the bed, though he kept his gaze still firmly locked on the beaming boy below him.

"Perhaps," he said, with that lingering hint of a grin, "we shall have to find you a mask so that, next time, I need not find you prowling near the door."

It was perhaps the one thing he could have said to make Draco feel all the better, all the more appreciated. The Dark Lord wouldn't begrudge him entrance, didn't want him to hover around the outside of his ring; he wanted him to be a part of it, was willing to bend the rules and regulations he himself had put in place to have Draco nearer to him. He hoped some of his gratitude showed on his face.

The Dark Lord backed further away. His fingers were curled around the door, pulling it backward when Draco called him back; he had to fight to find his voice, to draw it past the swelling bubble of contentment blossoming in his chest.

"My lord? My lord, can I ask you about-- about what I overheard?"

One eyebrow ridge rose. "You may."

"You-- you said you'd be staying...."

"I did."

"Why?"

A smile tugged at the edges of the Dark Lord's mouth, but Draco received little more answer than that. The Dark Lord backed away further, pulling the door with him. Through the crack between, out of the darkness, Draco heard him call, "Sleep well, my Draco," unsure whether he ought to take this as his response, or a mere dismissal.

"Goodnight... master"

Though the door shut, Draco saw still the image of the long, pale face with its hollowed planes. He shut his eyes, wanting to etch that image in his mind, wanting to hold it there, a man, the _Dark Lord_ grinning at him, sharing secrets with him, welcoming him. He sighed happily and pulled back the sheets of his bed, shuffling beneath the tight, smoothed blankets, then shut his eyes to the world, wishing this day would just dally on.

_A/N: Ah, little Dracykins _is_ in far more danger than he realizes, isn't he? "Master," he called him.... I love playing with details! ;) Let me know what you think please!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	5. If I Tell Myself that Books Lie

_A/N: Sorry it's been a while. Schoolwork, you know. I hope this chapter has been worth the wait. Enjoy!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

The night didn't allow him to linger in pleasant remembrances or delusions of acceptance and good intentions, however. He slipped swiftly from warm slumber into the cool, shady world of dreams, where his own memories quickly welled up to combat his falsehoods and fictions.

He was wandering along a beaten track his feet knew well; they did not stumble over the shifting rock and sand of the steep slope or slip on the tufts of grass and weed. Below him stretched a long sweep of lawn, tanning in the dry heat of summer and disappearing into the thick of a forest; before him the last vestiges of the sun were fading, disappearing beneath their patchwork quilt of rock-faced mountains, stealing away their light to let the night paint the grounds in grey, blue, black, and purple shadow, leaving its mark as a bruise across the land.

He entered the stadium, as if he had always known that was his destination, and as he mounted the stairs, he was unsurprised at the number of people crowded into the stands, only noted vaguely that their raucous cheers and shouts seemed to reach him as though he still stood at the top of the rise in the castle's shielding shadow. Here, as the sky darkened to a deep blue, he felt alone and unprotected, even as he slid into a spare seat between Crabbe and Goyle; something foul approached, but as he sat on this bench, he was powerless to prevent it.

Above the distant cries of the crowd, he made out one voice, crisp and clear. "Oh, look! There he is! There's Harry!" Hermione Granger, sitting only a few seats below him, was bouncing in her seat, one hand clutching the arm of Ron Weasley beside her. "And that's Cedric Diggory coming up behind him!"

Draco peered down into the maze of high hedgerows, through the shadows, and the enchantments, and the sea of people, following Granger's pointing finger. Two miniscule figures were just visible racing between the bushes, running along the same path toward a point of blazing, blue light.

"Come on, Harry!" Ron shouted, leaping to his feet.

Draco saw what was going to happen before it did. Diggory and Potter both grasped the handles of the Triwizard Cup at once and, with a flash of blue light, vanished from sight. Even as they did, the Dark Mark blazed on Draco's arm, seemed to burst into flames; his fingers groped at the blazing wound, as the pain sent him slipping away backward from all the shouting people around him, caused his head to reel. The instant roar of the crowd, suddenly all around him once more, stunned and deafened him as he slid down off his seat, ignored by them all, by Crabbe and Goyle even, as they sat still and silent as gargoyles beside him, useless as stone effigies.

He watched through fogging vision the red blurs of the Weasley clan charge down onto the field, the bouncing tangle of hair as Granger tore away with them. He saw from his slouched position, as he sat on the bleacher's footstool, the limp figures of Potter and Diggory on the field and the mob of people rushing toward them from the stands.

And suddenly he was among them, still faint with pain as the Mark continued to sear on his arm, his eyes still watering, vision still fuzzy, and his ears ringing. He was standing just behind the front ring of concerned professors and officials, watching as Dumbledore bent over Potter, grabbed him by the shoulders, and flipped him over onto his back; Diggory, beside him, was clearly dead, his grey eyes blank and staring up at stars he couldn't see.

"Harry! _Harry!_"

Potter's eyes flickered open, his hand released the Cup, but he held Diggory all the tighter to him, and snatched Dumbledore's wrist instead. "He's back," Potter gasped, his voice hoarse. "He's back. Voldemort."

And with those words, Draco felt the ground tip away from him, as a wild, eldritch shriek echoed in his head, rang off the domed sides of his skull. His head reeled so much that for a moment he lost all sense of what was around him, saw the world merely as a black vortex and white Catherine wheels. The screech, that sound borne on the ebb of life blood, resolved itself into words, which were more horrible even than the wordless cry of grief. _"Cedric! Ced? Ced! My son! No! My son!"_ Draco felt as though he was going to drop to his knees, to tip over backward and tumble into the whirling oblivion, but then his feet hit solid ground and he was standing in a dim, well-furnished office room, his own father's hand tight on his shoulder, rough and possessive.

"My lord, he will serve you well."

"Lucius," said an icy voice from the shadows; it could have been a hiss of a frothing log on the low fire that burned in the gaping grate, "for once, stay silent and let the boy speak." Two eyes, like glowing embers, like blazing rubies through the shadow caught Draco's eyes, held him pinned. The spitting snarl became a silken purr. "Well, boy? Do you serve of your own volition? What do you offer me?"

Draco's voice seemed to clog his throat, made breathing even difficult; in his fear, his nervous anticipation, he felt as though he was choking on a wad of the room's dense darkness, as though the black was a swaddling swath, a Lethifold that sought to plug any orifice near it, to snuff out any life, any light and replace it with its own blindness, its passive servility. His father's hand released him with a swift jerk and a sharp, whispered, "Go on." Draco had to swallow down the hard lump before he could squeeze out a reply.

"My lord, I will serve you--" his voice trembled as the practiced phrase tripped from his tongue; the weird undulations of the muscles, the pulsations of air against his throat, in his mouth felt foreign "--as well as I can."

He felt his father's steel tipped eyes slicing into his mind through the back of his head; instruction dripped like poison from their blades. The force of his will bent Draco's back, curved his spine so that he was staring at his own reflected image on the polished dress shoes he had been forced to wear, that left his toes numb even though it was July. It drew the words from the pit of his stomach as though from a well, by crank and shaft and brute force. "How can I prove myself to you?"

There was a pause, during which the Dark Lord silently, unseen by Draco, moved around the ebony desk and came to stand in front of him. A shiver stole along Draco's curved spine as the wizard's shadow fell over him, sucking any faint heat from the drafty castle air, as the sharp points of his eyes bored in. And then, his fingers were slicing across Draco's bowed face, like spined icicles melting against his trembling flesh as they traced the slow line of his jaw, came to rest below his chin. By their merest invitation, Draco felt his head rise until it was the Dark Lord's flaming eyes, the chasms of his slit pupils that he saw himself reflected in. A horrible smile curved the lipless mouth, and the fingers were knives on his skin, burning in their deathlike cold, hardly bearable, tightening his jaw to keep a grieved moan chained.

"There will be time for that, my Draco. For now it is enough that you consent to the conditions of... our _indenture_...." His mouth became a scimitar, turning up at the corners, at the acquisition of the word, as if he spoke a quip, though Draco found no humor in it. "Lucius!" The shout was a whip crack. "Leave us. Your task is done. Shut the door behind yourself."

Draco looked back over his shoulder, feeling the fingers that bound him fast drag canals of ice-burn across his cheek, but looking back despite. His father had bent low, so that his face was hidden, his expression a secret known only to the frosted stones of the floor, his black cloak swept out like a bat's wings. "Of course, my lord. Thank you."

Draco hadn't expected the moment of parting to come so soon, and found now that he was frightened to remain here with his new master, preferring the devil he knew to the the one whose dreaded story had come to him splattered across the pages of history books. He wanted to cry out, to recall the man who now inched backward toward the door, still bent double in deference to the one who held his son in a cruel, cold grasp, but what was there to say? Draco's voice was lost amid the conflicting images, the ideals and realities that played against each other in his mind as he tried to calculate what the bent-backed man had meant to him, would mean to him in his absence, and over it all reigned the one idea that he had failed: For fifteen long years he had toiled in his father's apprenticeship, learned his ways, his every mannerism and quirk, sought to reproduce them all in himself, to make himself a carbon-copy so that some of his father's self-love might fall on his double, too. But he must have missed something, something important, and now he saw his last hopes of impressing, of gaining the man's approval slip away through that open door.

When Lucius Malfoy had vanished into the corridor, and shut the door, locking in that suffocating darkness, locking Draco in with the beast, the Dark Lord, Draco's new master, recalled him back to his attention, giving him no moment to pause, no time to reflect or to miss. "Now," he breathed in the merest hiss, "you ask to prove yourself, my Draco: Show me the seal that binds us."

When Draco hesitated, his mind still scouring the secretive halls for his father, the sibilant voice shot out, took on a poisoned barb, flashed of steel, hammered to the thin line of a rapier. "The Dark Mark, Draco! Show it to me! Prove yourself mine!"

His eyes fastened to the Dark Lord's burning rubies, his trembling fingers peeled back the layer of black fabric that was a second skin to him and just as painful to flay; he dared not look down, but saw the Dark Lord's eyes widen in recognition of the old, ugly sign, the blood-red tattoo that Draco knew was burned there, seared on his flesh.

"There," the Dark Lord breathed, raising a long, white spindle of a finger to hover in the tingling air above the gruesome Mark, fixing it with hungry eyes blazing. Draco might have imagined a spark flying between the painted serpent's forked tongue and its master's fingertip, a flash of recognition and familiarity that Draco found too dreadful to consider, that he shut his eyes against, as though the blackness behind his eyelids could blot away the idea.

"I have waited a long time to have you in my service, Draco," the Dark Lord, his voice again dropping to blend with the hiss and spit of the flames, "and I know you won't disappoint me."

Whether or not he had imagined the first spark, Draco was almost certain of the second, for the sharp prick of it delving into his flesh as the Dark Lord's hand closed possessively even on his upper forearm was real enough to draw a quick yelp past his guarded lips.

Draco awoke with those words ringing through his mind even as he listened to the grind of the key in the lock and sensed that the Dark Lord had come to release him from his nightly imprisonment.

As the door creaked open, Draco, shivering, his heart still beating a swift tattoo against his chest, sat up in bed, drew his knees up to his chest and peered over their protective breastwork into the deep chasm of shadow beyond the flickering blue light of his own room. Sure enough, his wide eyes were met by a gleaming red ember. It blinked once and then the door opened wider to reveal the monster in full and he strode forward into to the room as if on wheels, coming toward Draco with an outstretched, death-pale hand. "My Draco...."

Draco shrank away, fearing and loathing that icy caress. "Don't touch me!" The shout pushed through him before he could throw down any barricade to it. He immediately expected its repercussions, certain such loose words would be punished.

Instead, the Dark Lord paused, lowered his hand, his gaze fixed on the quivering boy before him. "Why are you up so early?" he asked quietly.

Draco didn't want to answer, merely wanted him to go away, to leave him alone, hoped silence would hasten his retreat.

"My Draco, why?" the Dark Lord repeated, taking a single step forward. His voice was a low purr again, smooth and liquid as a potion as it worked its way into Draco's blood.

The words came tearing through Draco's throat, hot and sharp, as though they'd had no time to cool from the forge, brought forth too soon by the poison in his blood, "I was dreaming."

"Of what?"

"Of you," Draco conceded unwillingly.

The Dark Lord laughed softly, taking another step. "What was I doing to you in your dreams, my Draco, that you fear me now so? Did we not part in good company last night? Did you not call me "master" and I call you mine?"

"I-- I did. _You_ did, but--"

"Have I not, by now, proven myself contrary to all you've heard? Do you truly trust to the bedtime stories of childhood, the secondhand accounts of history books over your own firsthand knowledge?"

"N--no," Draco stammered, knowing that in saying otherwise he'd be deemed rightly a fool.

"Then do not quake so." He was near enough now that as he stretched out his spidery hand once again, the tips of his fingers brushed Draco's cheek; Draco shuddered once violently, but then fell still. "I would not have you cower."

The fingers released him and Draco looked up. The eyes awaited an affirmation, so he dropped his head to murmur, "Yes, my lord."

He had hoped the obeisance would send the Dark Lord away, appease his appetite for deference at least for a little, but he made no move to leave. Instead, he regarded Draco for several long minutes, coming to the conclusion at last of, "Get your cloak, Draco, and follow me."

There was nothing more Draco could do than obey. He slipped from the bed and slung the woolen garment over his heavy shoulders. He didn't want to look at the wizard he followed, and so tried to tail him at first by sound alone, but this soon proved futile; his already quiet footsteps were made mute by the dust still carpeting the disused corridor and steep steps.

They wound up through the slowly lifting shadows of the castle as dawn peeked into the uppermost of the windows and still they climbed, through a door and up a tight, spiral stair. The Dark Lord pushed open another door and immediately they were beneath the lash of an icy gust, apparently standing near the epicenter of all four winds, each one whipping at the hem of Draco's cloak, wrapping it tight around his legs, even as the Dark Lord gave him a sharp shove in the small of the back and sent him out into the firing field in earnest.

He bent his head against the wind, huddling behind the collar of the woolen cloak, and tried to peer around even as the winds buffeted him, tried to knock him off his feet; he found it impossible, until the Dark Lord stepped up behind him, and placing a hand on Draco's hunched shoulder, waved his wand. The air battered at an invisible barrier that leapt up around the two of them, but could not reach them, neither with its tickling lash nor with its icy bite.

"Look west," the Dark Lord commanded into the sudden silence.

Draco obeyed, turning his back on the rising sun to where it painted the distant hemlocks in a blinding green. He was reminded forcibly of the morning he had spent on the castle steps-- was it only two days ago?

"What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"Yourself, Draco."

"My self is in the west?"

"It would like to be, wouldn't it?" the Dark Lord hissed. He had slithered down to hover near Draco's shoulder, his hand slipping down to grasp his right forearm in a firm vise. "You'd like to be in the west. At Hogwarts. You placed me just now on a pedestal beside that pestilent Dumbledore, didn't you? You awoke and found me frightening, so you turned instead to my foe. You looked at the two of us and thought the doddering old fool was beckoning you back with that deceptively kind grin. Allow yourself to go back, Draco, for a moment."

It took longer than usual, shivering in the Dark Lord's grasp, with the wind howling as it broke around their sanctuary. Draco focused his energy on the brightening evergreens, on the distant, blue horizon beyond that, the morning sun warming the back of his head, and eventually, a smile relaxed across his face and he found himself striding through the marble-lined entrance hall of his memories.

"Now," the Dark Lord hissed, "I ask you, Draco: Are you yourself in these visions of yours? Are you the Draco that stands here in front of me, enjoying the warmth of the barrier I have thrown up around us?"

Draco hesitated. A moment before, he had, in his mind, been seated at the breakfast table and the Slytherins around him had been guffawing at a brilliant joke he had just recounted to them. Now that image broke at the seams, vanished like wisps of smoke even as he sought to grab at it, even as the Dark Lord began once more to speak:

"You are not. _That_ Draco did not know his place, had not yet come to understand himself. _You_ understand yourself, my Draco. You know what you are. Why do you fight it still? Why do you reach for what you cannot have? Hogwarts might have been accepting of you, Draco, before you yourself knew why you had come into this world, but now, my Draco, can you imagine what they would do to you if you returned as you have been so eager to?"

Draco hesitated, trembled as the new image resolved itself, began to play before his eyes.

"Tell me," the Dark Lord coaxed into his ear.

"They-- they--" But the image was too awful to be described. Draco saw himself climbing the wide stone stairs, stepping through the towering, oak doors, and even as he turned into the Great Hall, the clamor began around him. The portraits on the walls raised shouts of alarm, the students nearest the door let out screams, some near the back stood, a few drew wands. A suit of armor came clanking out from one of the corridors off the hall, his steps slow but deliberate, and in his hands a battle ax, still sharp. Dumbledore himself had stood at the high table; his wand was out, as was McGonagall's. The suit of armor came up behind Draco, its elbows squealed as the arms slammed shut, tight around his chest, and Dumbledore was striding up between the tables, even as he called back over his shoulder, "Professor McGonagall, alert the Ministry. Tell them that we've a Death Eater they'll want for questioning. Tell Cornelius to summon the dementors and have them brought here." Then, the headmaster's wand was in his face and his eyes did not gleam in benignity, but with a fire that easily peeled the flesh from Draco's face, made him want to howl aloud with pain. "Traitor," he hissed. "You think to return here to harm my students? Never! I cannot allow--" "But I can explain!" But already the doors were opening again and with them came a cruel fog that sent Draco out of himself, that rose through his frame and blinded his eyes and brain with an icy numbness, a hollow, empty--

"My Draco."

The Dark Lord had turned him around and Draco was staring into his skull-like face, gulping in the arctic air to replace that which the suit of arms had squeezed from him. His head pounded, the brain in his skull pulsing angrily.

"You see why you cannot go back, I think?"

Draco nodded heavily. "Would-- would he really-- Just like that?"

"You have been reading Grindelvald's memoirs?"

Draco nodded again.

"Then, you know exactly what Dumbledore is and is not capable of."

_A/N: This chapter began as a replacement for my beloved chapter three (which was composed of longer retellings of Draco's dreams), but then.... _LV: Ooh! look! a plot bunny! It's_ shiny.... Well, there it is: That's the honest truth about that last bit.... He wanted a mirror that would let Draco see back to Hogwarts, but I told him he couldn't have one, because it would make Snape a moot point, but it did seem too short if Draco just woke up; hopefully that plot bunny didn't run too far into the undergrowth and off the beaten plot path. Let me know what you all thought, please! Personally, there were bits of that I am really rather fond of (that first bit came out exactly as I'd have liked it to and Voldy's plot bunny had some interesting things to say, though it might have been more eloquent), but others that weren't altogether to my liking, so if you could just lend me some advice, I'd very much appreciate it. :)_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	6. Can I Tell You a Secret?

_A/N: Wow! I'm sorry. I think I let a whole semester go without updating! But summer's here now and so is the newest chapter. Enjoy!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

His conversation with the Dark Lord had not had the desired effect, Draco thought as he sat through one of Alecto Carrow's wheezy lectures not long afterward. His hands clenched below the table, he stared fiercely toward the front, but never saw the stooped professor. _When,_ Draco wondered_, did I ever let things get this far? How did I end up here, serving a master I hate, unable to return to the one place I--_ Well, "love" was really too strong a word, but he had been happy at Hogwarts, he had felt accepted, and that was more than he could say for home. Here, though, he realized, the level of acceptance he received was frightening. Like a pet, the Dark Lord intended to keep him here, beneath his fiery gaze, his wand, and even his thumb if he could break him. Draco had the sudden revolting image of himself following in the Dark Lord's wake, with a hanging head but docilely all the same, a servile shadow. Even imagined, the vision brought the blaze of shame to his face.

He would not become some pet, or a slave. He would not stay here until whatever kept the fire alive inside him, kept his head raised and his tongue barbed could be snapped like a twig.

"Malfoy?" came a tittered voice.

He had to get out. But how could he do it?

"Malfoy?" the voice called again. "Draco?"

If he only knew Durmstrang better, as well as he did the Manor, then the Dark Lord could never keep him, just as his father never could.

"Malfoy!" The spell went off with a bang, struck with the force of a loosed palm across his arm. He started and looked around, his eyes focusing on Carrow, her arms akimbo and a peeved expression on her lumpy face. Her short, thick wand jutted out like an extra appendage from her closed right fist.

"Pay attention! Now, tell me what is needed for the Cruciatus Curse."

"The-- the _what_?" Draco sputtered.

"The Cruciatus Cruse! The second Unforgivable! Come on, Draco!" she whined, her voice shrill as a mosquito's, taking on a banshee's shriek.

The Cruciatus Curse.... While Alecto's brother, Amycus, had spent the last month teaching them to Disarm and Stun and other such charms useful even to a Death Eater, she had taught them curses. They had begun with the minor jinxes-- Leg-Locker and Jelly Legs and _Levicorpus_-- but had not till now so much as mentioned those curses forbidden by wizard law, the mere casting of which got one shut away in Azkaban Prison for life....

Alecto heaved a sigh and said, "Nott, Malfoy obviously isn't up to answering. Would you?"

Theodore's voice rang out from behind Draco, whose eyes had come to rest on his now knotted hands in his meditation. "The Unforgivable Curses require clear intention. They won't work unless you _want_-- _really_ want to cause pain."

His sycophantic tone, his quick response grated on Draco's nerves, narrowed his eyes he turned on the boy in a glower. He _still_ didn't get it.

Nott shrugged.

"I'm sorry my class is boring you, Draco," Alecto sniffed before continuing to the class at large, "As Nott says, you have to _mean_ Unforgivables and they cannot arise from righteous feeling, either...."

But her class wasn't boring Draco, that was half the problem. It kept pace with his mind, offered the dangling carrot it needed to keep him moving forward with his calculations.

The Cruciatus Curse, the second Unforgivable.... The Dark Lord had used that very curse on _him_ not but the night before. _They won't work unless you_ really _want to cause pain...._ Whatever, then, the Dark Lord said, however many times he told Draco he was trustworthy, he had clearly wanted to hurt him; he would not have been able to do so otherwise. The thought strengthened his resolve, deepened the roots of the idea that had sprouted in his mind, so that their tendrils stretched out across his mind, seeking new resources, a more coherent plan.

---

Nott caught up with him after class. "Hey. Draco. You feeling okay?"

"Of course." Draco's mind was still lost in the beginnings of a plot and he paid hardly any attention to the tall boy striding beside him, the boring of his green eyes.

"You look... sort of pale.... Maybe you ought to go up to the hospital? Do we have a hospital?"

"I don't think so."

"Or is it learning the Unforgivables? I'm sure you'll be fine. You're Draco Malfoy for goodness' sake!"

---

The Dark Lord held out an ancient leather-bound tome and Draco took it without a thought for the fragility of its moldering cover and pages, shoving it beside him on the bed. His eyes never left the glowing embers of the Dark Lord's. "What can you tell me about Durmstrang?"

"Durmstrang?" The hairless ridges where his eyebrows ought to have been raised. The light shadow lifted from his eyes, allowed the blue-white light of the portable flames to flicker oddly in the slit pupils.

"Yes."

A long finger ran its way along the line of his mouth. The expression in his eyes was harder to fathom with those incessant flares diminishing the eyes' own eerie light. "What would you like to know?"

"Oh, you know, the basic stuff. History, maps..." Draco said with a casual sweep of his hand.

"Maps?"

"Yes."

"Draco, when will you learn? What must I do?" His eyes rolled toward the stone ceiling.

Draco's heart sank toward his stomach.

"Are you even now considering leaving? When I have showed you what would happen? What they would do to you?"

Draco looked toward him, but his eyes shivered in their sockets, would not fasten on the Dark Lord's. "I don't have to go to Hogwarts," he muttered. "I could go anywhere."

"Oh, Draco..."

"I'm not happy." Draco let his eyes cower into a dark corner of the room. "I don't like it here."

"_That _I could have guessed. Why not? What can I do?"

Draco turned his eyes back toward his master. This time they met. "You really want to know?"

"I've told you, Draco. You're needed here."

"But I doubt there's anything you can do." The brief flare that had warmed Draco's cold depths went out and he dropped his eyes again. His hands had found one another, were writhing in his lap.

"Tell me."

"You frighten me. I don't like being around you."

"You would rather I stayed away?"

"Yes."

"But then who would you have? I can't lift the restrictions I've placed on you, Draco. I'll lose you. You'll wander off. You've made that clear. And I thought you wanted a father?"

"I have--"

"A _proper_ father. One who actually cares what happens to you."

His hands wrung together even more tightly, squirmed. His breath quickened. "It-- it has always sounded-- nice."

"Well then?"

"You're offering to be my father?"

"Draco, what do you think I've been trying to do?"

"I... I don't know.... I hadn't... I guess I hadn't thought of it that way...." Draco looked up into his eyes, saw them burning with a fire that gave no warmth. "You used the Cruciatus on me. You wanted to hurt me."

"Does your own father not also do so?"

"Well... yes... occasionally...."

"And how am I supposed to teach you how to behave without punishment?"

"I... don't know...."

"So then you'll have me?"

"I don't know." Still, though he'd have liked to erase the image that had appeared to him that morning, that he had carried with him as if it were some sort of talisman, he could not seem to replace it with any image of himself as the Dark Lord's son.

The ridges above his eyes rose again at the quick, sharp response. "Perhaps I can begin as your mentor?"

"Yeah... yeah... I guess you could." Draco tried to give him a smile, but thought it might have gotten strangled by unease on the way through his chest to his mouth.

"Then pick up the book."

Draco did it, this time noting the softness of the worn black leather, feeling the cracks in the hide.

"I want you to read it. You've finished Grindelwald's journal. This is the next step. I consulted this book frequently when it was mine."

"This was yours?" The Dark Lord wasn't that old.

"For a time. Now it's yours. Many of the spells in there are heavily restricted, even banned by the Ministry, but they are effective. That, Draco, is where I learned a great deal of what I know, and what other Death Eaters don't."

"The other Death Eaters don't...." Draco turned the cover gently. He could feel the wood beneath the leather skin. _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ had been handwritten on the cover page in a pointy, calligraphic font. Flourishes decorated the corners and worn edges of the parchment page like an old manuscript.

"Most don't. Perhaps Thanatos Nott, some of the eldest. But as I say, many of these spells are considered illegal now and certainly aren't taught at Hogwarts, nor will they even be here... to most students."

Draco ran a hand across the grass-blade-thin page, but his eye was captured by a small parchment folder on the inside of the front cover. The card it contained had been filled with a list of names and dates. But neatly printed just above the card on the pocket's inside were the words _Property of Hogwarts School Library_. Draco extracted the card and found the name _Tom Marvolo Riddle_ written at the top. He looked up at the Dark Lord.

"How did you ever get this away from the school?" Draco had heard dreadful stories about hexes that had fallen upon students who took a library book even so far as Hagrid's pumpkin patch.

The Dark Lord grinned. "It was simple really. I checked the book out of the restricted section, carried it back to my room and began to strip the jinxes off it one by one. The copy the school has, if Dumbledore didn't burn it, is merely a copy of this. I placed all Madam Lawson's curses on that one. I don't think she ever found out."

Draco turned the page and found a table of contents.

"I'm going help you to master these, Draco. I want you proficient in them, to wield a power that will make people know you are my own."

Draco peeked up at him from behind a fallen lock of blonde bang. His finger had paused above a word-- _Horcruxes_-- the very last on the page, that did not yet mean anything to him. He was eager to turn to the section. The corners of Draco's mouth twitched upward. "I'll abuse it."

"Yes, I expect so. You would not be mine otherwise." The corners of the Dark Lord's mouth turned up as well. "That last one," the Dark Lord added, noting the word Draco pointed out, "you will not cast, but feel free to learn the theory. It is a fascinating read."

"But why--"

"It is enough that I have told you you will not."

_A/N: Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think. It's been a long time since I've written anything not for class and I'm afraid I might be a bit rusty. Tips, reminders would be nice. I'll try and have the next chapter up soon. I think we may be jumping ahead a few months, say to February? ;) This is the end of the most recent edits._

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	7. Not So Merry Meetings

_A/N: So, my friends. This is it. This is the chapter I have perhaps most looked forward to writing and that it came out well, I think, only makes me more excited for you to read it. This chapter is perhaps, more or less, the main reason DEDC had to be edited in the first place. So, I hope that doesn't get your hopes up too terribly. I will say this before I leave you, every so often, JKR's timeline and mine touch. This and the following chapter is one of those times. So, to be informed about what's going on at Hogwarts, see the end of chapter 24-- Occlumency-- of OotP. No High Inquisitor Umbridge on this timeline, though. ;) Enjoy!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

As the winter months came on, earlier than they had in England and with a greater ferocity than Draco had ever seen, the temperature dropped so that students and Death Eaters alike walked through the hallways in several pullovers, their thickest traveling cloaks, and warmest pair of gloves, and still saw their breath rise in thick clouds. Draco struggled to curl stiff fingers in fur-lined dragonhide around the thin shaft of a quill. By early November, the first floor classrooms' windows were blocked by snow drifts and the whole floor seemed caught in a perpetual state of twilight. A battalion of house-elves was assigned the sole task of finding enough firewood in the blanketed woods to fuel the many fires kept burning inside the castle. Draco had seen them crossing the entrance hall with their tiny arms full, icicles hanging from their noses, and frost lining the hair of their ears, all thought of keeping invisible forgotten. Several, Draco learned, had already had to have been dragged back into the castle by the others and propped before the roaring kitchen fire bundled in several woolen blankets and with a half-pint of butterbeer.

Alecto Carrow announced in late November that they would begin actually attempting the Cruciatus Curse and brought in a large jar of wolf spiders to practice on. Draco stood beside the desk looking down at his. It seemed quite harmless, merely standing there flexing its pinchers. His eyes wandered around the room to where his classmates had eagerly begun practicing. Several of the spiders had rolled over onto their backs, squirming, writhing, their long legs twitching miserably. Draco knew if the spiders had been capable of human speech their screams would have resounded throughout the room, long and unbroken. His eyes fell back on the wolf spider before him. Looking into its many eyes, Draco remembered the flame in his bones so great that he had thought they might all turn to ash beneath the curse, heard the echoes of his own prolonged screams, the pain in his lip as he bit through it, the taste of blood and tears that had streamed, unable to be stemmed, from his eyes.

He raised his wand, but it shook slightly in his hand. The first red jet missed, sailing past the spider and leaving a long, black scorch mark in the desk. Draco chanced a glance about, but no one seemed to have noticed; Carrow was several feet away praising Theodore Nott's spellwork. Draco took aim again, making sure to steady his hand, even if he couldn't quite keep the rest of him from trembling. This time the spell connected, but the spider, rather than rolling over, curling in upon itself, was flung backward to the end of the desk and seemed otherwise unharmed.

Enraged, on the defensive, the wolf spider reared up, reaching out with its long legs. It started to scuttle quickly toward Draco, its many eyes glaring. Draco took several, slow steps backward, not willing to wait for the vindictive arachnid to reach him. He knocked against the desk behind him. It tipped and Cat Yaxley screamed as her own spider went sliding toward her.

"Malfoy!" Carrow snapped, hurrying over. She saw the advancing spider and grabbed the jar from her desk. She quickly had it behind the glass, its pinchers scraping vainly against its prison. Carrow shook her head as she walked away from him and did not offer another spider, nor stay to hear an explanation. Draco had the distinct impression she had been watching him all along. Nott was staring at him openly, his mouth hanging and his green eyes wide with surprise.

Christmas passed in Durmstrang without so much as a blip. Draco found himself looking up at the low ceiling of Great Hall and missing the enchanted snow falling warm and dry on his shoulders, in his hair, and into the bowl of steaming, sugar-dusted oatmeal he would have been enjoying at Hogwarts. The walls seemed particularly drab and the room horribly open without Hogwarts' twelve, glittering spruces. The corridors that day and the week or so preceding were taut with silence, all the students buttoning their lips, none of them quite daring to burst into the carols that tingled on the tips of their tongues; their eyes darted toward one another, each hoping for someone else to be the instigator. None of them went home, but they ploughed on with their work. No presents came as on the holiday, like always, there was no owl post.

Draco found Crabbe, Goyle, and Theodore Nott in the break between Wormtail's class-- on stealth, concealment, and other tricks of spying-- and lunch to exchange a cursory "Happy Christmas" with them. He sensed then that each of the others was feeling some resentment at having been forced to stay on over the ignored Yuletide. Theodore had never spent the Hogwarts holiday inside the castle and Draco pitied him the confinement even as he consoled himself by reminding himself that at least he was missing the annual Malfoy Christmas party with all its glittering facade hiding the emptiness of the boxes beneath the tree.

That night Draco hadn't dared to bring up the holiday to the Dark Lord, but had moved on with his lessons.

Among the incantations of _Secrets of the Darkest Art _Draco had found the Veritas Curse, a spell forerunner to Veritaserum that had been banned upon the discovery of the potion because victims suffered greatly under the curse and sometimes were driven crazy by the pain and the forcible removal of their most secret feelings. However, unlike the potion, a person under its influence could not stopper truths halfway to his mouth. Draco shuddered to think of himself beneath the curse and was hesitant to ask the Dark Lord to help him master it. But his mentor seemed to have memorized the contents of the book and had developed the habit of asking Draco whether he had mastered a curse if Draco failed to ask him about the more gruesome spells. Draco didn't think he'd ever forget the twisted face of the dark-eyed house-elf-- Vlad, who had hated Karkaroff, but hated the Dark Lord more, and who fancied the pretty house-elf Lita, who worked in the kitchens-- as he writhed on the ground.

Draco fell slouched against the bed when he lifted the curse. The elf at his feet continued to whimper and moan, curling in upon himself.

"I'm impressed," the Dark Lord said, and Draco looked at him with dilated eyes and ragged breaths.

Late one Monday in February, Draco burrowed under the numerous fleece blankets and the downy quilt and cradled the open book in his lap, against his drawn up knees to await the Dark Lord. He turned the page and his eyes fell across the heading '_Inferi'_. Below this was an illustration of one of the monsters, an old, rotting corpse brought back to life by Dark magic. Draco glanced around the room, not wanting to meet the empty eyes of the ink sketch. Would the Dark Lord quiz him on this as well? Or, like Horcruxes, was this a topic he'd be allowed to skip?

There was a faint knock on the door. The Dark Lord glided in, but left the door wide behind him. "Well?" he asked.

"Good evening, my lord," Draco tried hopefully, thinking he was asking for some genuflection. Draco wondered if he ought to stand and bow as well. He was still not certain of the politesse that applied to their odd relationship.

"Yes," the Dark Lord, breathed, his snakelike nostril's flaring. Draco noticed then that his eyes burned brighter than he had seen them for some time and that his mouth seemed lighter. He left it parted, sucked in the cold air of Draco's cell with a faint hint of a grin. "It is. And I want you to share it with me."

Draco, watching him, reached for the scrap of parchment he was using as a bookmark, and closed the book. Laying it aside, he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and sat up straighter. "I don't think I understand, my lord."

"Get dressed, Draco. I'll wait in the corridor."

"But where are we going?" Draco called.

The door closed on him as a response.

Draco stared at the door for a few moments filled with only the hiss of the Dark Lord's silvery-blue flames. Then, seeing no alternative, no reason he ought not to, he followed the Dark Lord's command.

Draco dressed with care, uncertain of the occasion or venue, the pullover he wore over a fleece shirt was a deep grey that he thought would darken his eyes nicely so that they would stand out from his pale skin. The vicuna wool cloak pinned below his pointed chin with a handsome silver brooch of two snakes locked in combat. Beneath his boots, though, he wore thick woolen socks, simple and warm.

As soon as he opened the door, the Dark Lord started up the dark corridor so that Draco, dashing to keep up with his lengthened stride, had no chance to ask again where he was being taken.

The Dark Lord led him up the dusty steps and into the entrance hall. Light was spilling from the doors to the Great Hall, and voices drifted with the dust motes in its ray, most of them gruff and hoarse.

Draco followed the Dark Lord into the hall. The tables had again been pushed along the sides of the wall and the open floor was taken up instead by a cluster of people, some of them masked Death Eaters, but also nine ragged men and a woman whose faces were uncovered. Each of these seemed filthier than the last, more gaunt, paler. Each wore robes of a horizontal black and white stripes. Draco jogging to the Dark Lord's side, muttered, "Is there another meeting?"

"There will be," the Dark Lord answered back and there was a gleam in his red eyes, a turn to his mouth. "Didn't I tell you you could attend?"

"You did."

Cruel and disparaging eyes turned on Draco as he approached the milling group with the Dark Lord, some from behind masks, others not. The eyes of the ratty bunch were hollow, not unlike those of the illustrated Inferius, eyes in which the spark of life could hardly be seen, as if someone had snuffed that fire long ago and had left only the shell of these bodies to walk to the earth. Draco thought immediately that he would not want to cross these people.

"Hang on!" suddenly said the woman, whose black, unkempt hair spread out in a wild cloud from her dark, sunken face. Or was the darkness of it grime? "I know him! That's your boy, isn't it, Lucius?" She looked toward one of the staring, masked Death Eaters, who nodded stiffly, silently. "Cissy's son?"

"Yes, Bella," the Dark Lord smiled.

"Well!" The woman let out a raucous laugh. "I haven't seen you, Draco, since you were an ickle, wittle tot. Still clinging to Cissy's leg, then, you were."

Her horrible baby voice stopped Draco and he stared at her, horrified. The Dark Lord stopped beside him, glanced down. "How does she know me?" Draco whispered.

"Draco, meet your Aunt Bellatrix."

"Aunt--"

The wild woman grinned at him. Her teeth were yellowed and brown at the edges. And now Draco knew where this group had come from, why they looked so hideous.

"You broke into Azkaban!" Draco gasped, swinging round to the Dark Lord.

His father's cold snap of a voice answered from beneath one of the hoods, "Honestly, Draco! How dare you question--"

The Dark Lord held up a white hand to the man, but kept his eyes on Draco, smiling. "Yes, I did," he said calmly. "You can't expect me-- or us-- to rise without a proper army."

He moved away from Draco toward the convicts, moved among them, introducing each by name. "Antonin Dolohov, Augustus Rookwood-- I'd like to speak with you afterward, Rookwood-- your Uncle Roldolphus, his brother Rabastan Lestrange, Mulciber-- he used to work alongside your father quite often-- he's excellent with the Imperius as well-- Travers--"

Draco couldn't take any of it in, but stared at the vicious faces, each one of which bowed before their master. Bellatrix, as the Dark Lord paused before her, reached out a bony hand, touched his briefly before he strode away. Her husband Roldolphus, thin and even now wide-eyed as though in fright, grasped her other hand, peered across at her.

When the introductions were through, one of them-- Rabastan Lestrange-- looked toward Draco. His pale eyes, among the other's, were particularly vacant, making his glare all the more pointed. He asked the Dark Lord, "Is he still your--"

"Yes," the Dark Lord said, glaring at the thickset man pointedly. "Do you think I'd have brought him along tonight otherwise? Introduced him to all of you?"

Lestrange bowed his head. "No, my lord, of course not. Forgive me."

"Just don't question it again. In fact...." The Dark Lord turned and looked at Draco, still some yards away. "Perhaps he ought to have the honor." With a horrid grin, he said, "Come here, Draco."

Draco checked quickly behind him, then shuffled forward, keeping his head down, not wanting to meet the eyes of the convicts whose ranks he joined. He knew he was standing before the Dark Lord when he saw the long sweep of his black robe. Long, white fingers curled around his left wrist, held his arm before him, and Draco shuddered in his frozen grasp, struggled against the impulse to fight for escape, bit down on his lip.

"My lord, do you think this really proper? To--"

"Lucius, you yourself swore the boy would stand by me, did you not?"

"Of course, my lord, but--"

"Well, then let me treat him as mine." The red eyes turned to Draco again, who was quite bemused by these exchanges. "This may hurt some, they tell me." He pushed back Draco's sleeve, revealing the grinning skull with its horrible serpent tongue. Draco shivered to remember the spark that had shot between the Dark Lord's finger and the Mark when he had first examined it, the day Draco had been brought to him.

"Wait, my lord, what--"

But the white forefinger pressed against the Mark and his question was lost in a howl. The Mark burned black, seared on his arm, and as the Dark Lord released him to draw his wand, raise his hands to the ceiling, Draco stumbled backward, clutching his arm tight to him. Wind whipped up past Draco at the Dark Lord's command, tugged at Draco's cloak, at the hems of the Death Eaters' robes. It roared past his ears, and Draco saw the Death Eaters huddling into themselves, swaying to keep their feet.

And then all was still.

The Dark Lord lowered his wand and looked around him. Into the sudden stillness came the many _pops_, and _snaps_, and _cracks_ of Apparating Death Eaters, masked and robed. From the rest of the castle came the Death Eaters who remained at Durmstrang, tugging on masks as they entered: the Carrows, Wormtail with his gleaming, silver hand.... Draco spied wide eyes beneath the hoods as they caught sight of their newly rescued comrades. Several clasped hands with the convicts. Bellatrix pulled one of the smaller new arrivals into a tight hug and then pointed to Draco, whispering. The smaller Death Eater turned to follow Bellatrix's finger and she smiled at him, her blue eyes agleam. Draco returned it.

"Form ranks," the Dark Lord called before Draco could move forward to greet his mother. "Let me see that all of you are here."

The Death Eaters moved into the great circle Draco had seen before through the chink in the door. Even the convicts seemed to have places; their hooded companions shifted easily aside to leave spots open for them. Bellatrix stood between Lucius Malfoy and her husband Roldolphus.

Draco was left standing beside the Dark Lord in the middle, as the wizard raised his wand again and the winds whipped downward this time, crashing over all of them and making the circle sway.

When the storm quieted, the Dark Lord glanced down at Draco, considering. "For now, go stand between your mother and father, Draco."

As he moved into place, trembling somewhat, his mother's hand, hidden in a shapely dragonhide glove, moved to his shoulder, rested there. She didn't smell like herself-- she had removed her favorite paperwhite perfume, perhaps for anonynmity's sake-- but he knew it was her from the smile in her bright blue eyes he could see through the slits in her hood. "It's good to see you," she murmured.

"It's good to see you too, Mother," he whispered back.

His aunt shushed them both. Her eyes were rapt on the Dark Lord, grey eyes-- like his-- and oddly misty. Draco thought of cobwebs. His father, between him and her, was determinedly avoiding his gaze, staring straight ahead, his lips pressed thin.

"Welcome, my Death Eaters. You see why I have summoned you all here tonight, I think: To welcome back to our ranks several who had been missing." He glanced here at all the unmasked convicts. "Once, these were some of my most faithful. These are some of those that braved Azkaban rather than deny me. I remember telling you all last June I would have them back, and here they are. Lord Voldemort keeps his promises, does he not?"

There was a collective shudder around the circle as the Dark Lord pronounced his own name. Draco couldn't help joining it. The hooded and masked Death Eaters all muttered noises of assent and affirmation.

"Already I have spoken with them, and it has been agreed that they will remain here with me, far from the reach of the Aurors and the Ministry. From here, they will help me to push forward with those plans already in motion, and to devise new plots.

And we've another newcomer too." The Dark Lord turned, eyes blazing with pleasure, on Draco. Draco dropped his gaze as he continued, "My son, Draco, has joined us for the first time tonight."

Draco could feel the eyes of the whole circle upon him, but only acknowledged one pair. His father's grey eyes-- nearly twins of Draco's-- had swung round, wide to fasten on him. There was a sort of flash of furor in them. His hands in their dragonhide clenched and unclenched.

"I have been working with him, instructing him. He has been learning well, and I hope you will all give him your respect."

As the talk turned to the sort of briefs and stratagems Draco had overheard before, he allowed his eyes to wander around the circle. He was, he noted, the only Death Eater who appeared anywhere near his age. Practically everyone seemed larger and burlier, taller, or old and bent.

"Already I have the giant's allegiance. It is time to turn my attention to the dementors. I doubt it will take much longer. Tonight's meeting went well. They seemed quite eager to do whatever I required of them. I think memory must be long in a dementor," he continued thoughtfully. "There seemed to be some recall of the old days. They're certainly bitter about their imprisonment." He returned to the circle at large. "Fudge, Wormtail has told me, allowed some of them to patrol Hogwarts in the wake of Sirius Black's escape. They had a taste of freedom there. They remembered what it was like to have a steady supply of prey. I need to discover, though, whether the dementors can be freed from Azkaban without my intervention. Can they simply fly from the island or--"

"Please, my lord," said a voice from beneath one of the hoods across the circle. The man bent low in a sweeping bow, arms outspread. "The dementors are fastened to the island by means of certain charms, renewed every year by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures in cooperation with the Aurors."

"Ah. Are they simple charms?"

A second voice answered, a voice like a steely hiss. "No, my lord, quite complex, I think."

"Can you volunteer for the job, Macnair?"

"Generally, my lord, the job goes to someone higher up. I am a mere executioner." Here he lowered himself in a humble bow, grinning. Draco thought there was something mocking in the formality, but the Dark Lord seemed not to notice it.

"Jugson, how many Aurors generally go?"

"Only one or two," said the first Death Eater. "We're mostly bodyguards, there if something should go wrong."

"Can you volunteer and keep the spells from being performed?"

The man swept another bow. "Of course, my lord, it would be an honor."

"When is the next time they'll be renewed?"

"Not till the summer," said Jugson.

"June, I think," Macnair agreed.

"And how many from Magical Creatures are involved?"

"Not many. Three, maybe four."

The Dark Lord's hairless eyebrow ridges rose as he turned the first man. "A tall order."

"I can handle it."

"See that you do. The Confundus Charm will work nicely. You can convince the men from Magical Creatures they have already performed the spell, that is simple enough. It will be a matter of keeping them from the Ministry long enough to make it believable. You will have to send the dementors to me, as well."

"Quite simple, my lord. I will not fail you."

"No, I don't suspect you will." There was a threat in the steel of his voice. "And while we're discussing the Ministry. One of its members is lately deceased. Avery--" one of the Death Eaters, shorter than many of the others, jumped "--I believe it was on your advice that Broderick Bode was convinced to help me?"

"Yes, my lord," the man agreed, trembling visibly, even from his place across the circle.

"It appears as though that there were charms around the prophecy, did you know that, Avery? Lucius kept him under the Imperius only with great difficulty, he fought horribly, and yet the jolt from those charms broke all his power over him. We are fortunate that it also addled his brains, and he had to be taken to St. Mungo's. Perhaps you can explain what happened if you're so knowledgeable about the Department of Mysteries?"

"My lord! I don't know!" The man's eyes darted around the circle, as though hoping someone would vouch for him; no one did. "I didn't know that there were charms! I thought-- Bode was an Unspeakable! Oughtn't he to have been able to--"

"Apparently not." Avery quailed beneath his fiery glare. The Dark Lord continued to the group, "Nott was able to feign friendship with the man. Mungo's healers never have been careful about who they let in. Who would want to harm an injured or sick man? So when Bode began to recover speech, I believe, Nott anonymously sent him a Christmas present that proved fatal, did you not, Nott?"

Theodore Nott's aging father appeared even frailer than he was, bent-backed beside two of the largest Death Eaters-- men whose bouldery shape made Draco recall illustrations he had seen of giants-- as he inclined his head. "A cutting of Devil's Snare, my lord. Kept alive and healthy long enough by Mistress Strout, who I believe, also encouraged him to care for the plant himself." He bowed here to another of the Death Eaters.

She turned her head away from him and batted her hand as if to swat away the compliment, giggling girlishly.

"And no one suspects?"

"I've been suspended," said the woman. "On full pay, but all the same. They've questioned me, of course, but I've kept silent for Than-- Nott." She turned blue eyes on Theodore's father and cocked a shrug as if in apology.

He gave her a nod.

"So, it seems for now, Avery, you're false information has caused... not much damage. Yet, it does put me in need of another plan and set me back months. I'm not pleased, Avery."

"N--n--no, my lord. Of-- of course not. But I-- I did _think_--"

"Next time, Avery, verify your facts before you give them to me. Or else, what good are they?"

"It-- It _might_ have worked."

"But it did not. And now I must begin anew and have wasted time on fruitless schemes."

There was a slight shiver that ran through the circle. Draco felt it pass him like a breeze. There was fear in the eyes of those around him, in the eyes of the unmasked convicts as they looked on the Dark Lord.

"Severus, Lucius-- any news on the identity of the one who sent the dementors after Potter?"

The Death Eater standing on his mother's left shook his head. Draco looked curiously at Professor Snape, the Potions' master of Hogwarts. His dark eyes met Draco's momentarily. They bored through him with their intensity and Draco wasn't sure the professor was glad to see him.

Lucius' oily voice rolled from Draco's other side, "No, my lord, but I'm sure whoever it was has only helped you. Fudge continues to return to the incident, to use it as evidence that Dumbledore is trying to undermine--"

There was a soft hiss that might have hid a chuckle; another shiver worked its way around the circle. Draco felt his father beside him shudder most violently. "_Helped _me, Lucius? I'm beginning to suspect I can use Potter yet. This attack only makes me ever more eager to have the dementors at my bidding. Should this person try again...."

"Of-- of course, my lord," Lucius breathed. Draco chanced a glance at his father's face. He was struggling to hold the Dark Lord's fiery gaze. His eyes, very grey, kept darting toward the floor. "I merely meant-- I mean, after all-- Potter would have been more easily apprehended had he been exp--"

"I have stolen him from beneath Dumbledore's crooked nose before, Lucius. And this time the boy himself has showed me the way to do it. Distance," the Dark Lord corrected the stammering man, "does not seem to be an issue in this case. Nor do Hogwarts' enchantments. Plus, his being at Hogwarts, Severus has informed me, seems to erode his trust in his old protector, heightens his weakest emotions still more."

"But, my lord," Lucius tried, "you can't have known-- we all would have expected--" The Dark Lord's glare was so fierce that Draco's father broke off with a bone-rattling shudder that was echoed by the whole ring. The Death Eaters nearest him turned away, except Bellatrix, who continued to ogle the Dark Lord.

"Ah well, come June, if Jugson does his job, I suppose, it won't matter. I can ask the dementors then myself. In the meantime, we must hope whoever it is was does not try again." He said, "Perhaps that is enough for tonight." His eyes roved around the circle. "Rookwood, Avery, I need you both to stay. And Severus, if you don't mind, I'd like a further word with you about Potter."

Lucius looked up to glare at Snape, who nodded to the Dark Lord, smirking.

"Until next time, then, my Death Eaters." He raised his wand and the winds again rushed upward. Narcissa grabbed her son to keep herself steady. Draco peered up at her through eyes silted against the winds.

When the gales calmed, she looked down at him again. Her blue eyes found his grey ones. "Keep safe, Draco. Mind him." She bent down and kissed his cheek once before departing with a nearly silent _pop_. His father lingered only a moment afterward to frown at Draco, saying nothing. Then he too was gone, with a louder _crack_.

When every hooded Death Eater but Snape, the quaking Avery, and those who worked at Durmstrang had Disapparated, the Dark Lord raised his wand again. The winds whipped up around them, the air fell heavily on Draco, flattened his blonde locks to his head.

In the silence following, the Dark Lord looked around. His eyes rested first on Draco. "I expect you'll be in bed soon." Then his gaze traveled on to land on one of the convicts, pockmarked and hunched. "You first, Rookwood. Follow me. Avery-- be up at the office in a half an hour. Wait outside. Severus-- an hour."

He left and Rookwood trailed along behind him.

_A/N: There you are, my friends. What did you think? Please understand, I very much enjoy politics. I enjoy schemes and the insider glimpses these meetings allow me. But, really, if JKR offers me Auntie Bella to play with, you can hardly expect me to ignore the gift. Look for her to have a role later. I had hoped she'd be a major player here, but fresh out of Azkaban, there's only so much she knows. So, we'll all have to wait. So, please review! It tends to be, the more I hear about a story, the more it is in the forefront of my mind and the more writing I do for it. All for the sake of you, my delightful readers! Thank you!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	8. Outside Opinions

_A/N: Readers have requested more Snape in this fanfic and Snape, in this second version, apparently responded. There's more Bellatrix as well. Thank you, Jo, for this stirring cast._

_Yours forever, Tsona_

So Draco was to be left on his own tonight? The door unlocked? The Dark Lord indeed had to be having a good night....

Bellatrix came striding up to him, her wild eyes staring. Her grin was quite frightening, all rotting teeth and chapped lips. She panted somewhat, as though the night's events were more exertion than she was used to.

"So, Draco, you've taken your place at last! And now, I've returned to mine, too." Her long fingers reached forward and grabbed at his cheeks. Draco stumbled back, pulling away from her pinch, his mouth and eyes opening with disgust and horror. "Oh, it is good to know the Death Eaters will be in such good hands if, Merlin forbid, something should ever happen to--"

"We're _not_ in good hands, Bella."

Alecto Carrow came scuttling up beside the woman, tugging free of her mask.

"Not?" Bellatrix's voice was the rasp of nails on a chalkboard. Draco noticed hers were quite long, like talons on the ends of her fingers, and dark with dirt that had fused with the nail. "But the Dark Lord said--"

"The boy can't even perform the Cruciatus Curse!"

Bella spun round on him with her cobweb eyes, if possible, even wider. "You can't?"

A firm hand fell on Draco's shoulder. Draco glanced up into the face of Severus Snape, now unmasked to reveal the hooked nose, sallow skin, and curtains of black, greasy hair. "Alecto, do you dare speak this way about your master? Are you suggesting the Dark Lord's lying?"

Alecto scuttled backward, her muddy eyes flying open. "No! Snape, how dare you accuse--"

"How dare _you_, Alecto."

"But it _is_ true!" the hunchbacked woman whined. "I'm trying to teach him myself! He's hopeless!"

Draco felt the sharp stab of his professor's dark eyes and looked up to meet his boring gaze. It was easier to look at than his crazy aunt or the savage, lumpy face of Carrow. "It's true, sir," Draco said.

Snape's eyebrows rose in his high forehead.

"I-- I can't make myself mean it. I mean, the spiders we're working with have never done anything to _me_." Draco didn't dare mention that he knew exactly how the curse felt and how could he possibly want to put anything in that much pain? Why even Potter-- But Snape's eyebrows rose even higher and Draco wondered, not for the first time, if Snape was a Legilimens. The thought made Draco drop his gaze from his face, worried he had revealed too much, not wanting to endanger his father. Draco hoped Snape had only been able to read the most recent time he had been put beneath the spell, by the Dark Lord.

To his great surprise, he heard the wild, whooping, tittering laugh of his aunt rise up in front of him. "Oh, is that all! Cissy had the exact same problem, but it's easily fixed. I taught her and I can teach you too."

"Can you?" Snape said as though he very much doubted it.

"I can, _Snape_. It's Occlumency that does it. Being able to compartmentalize your feelings, calling on the most vicious ones when you need--"

"_You _know Occlumency?" said Snape, his eyebrows rising again.

"I do, Snape!"

"I was under the impression Occlumency was used to hide away secrets when the mind is being perused by a Legilimens. What have you been hiding from your master, Bella?"

"Nothing!" she spat.

"You, Snape?" Carrow sneered.

"Oh, nothing," Snape told her, casually waving aside the comment. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like a word with Draco."

"He's _my_ nephew!"

"And I was not aware that the title gave you exclusive privileges. He's my student."

"Was!" Carrow snarled.

Snape merely looked down at Draco, who met his stoic, beetle-black eyes again. "Draco?"

Draco nodded. "Yes, all right." He was rather curious what the Hogwarts Potions master might have to say to him, and whether he could glean any news of the school and England from him.

Snape strode from the Great Hall and Draco hurried to keep up with his long, quick strides, the billowing hem of his cloak, feeling the scathing glares of his aunt and Carrow all the time.

"Is there somewhere we can go where we won't be overheard?" Snape asked him quietly when they had passed through the great doors. His eyes roved upward, darting to the pointed archways that looked down upon the entrance hall.

Each of them seemed dark and silent to Draco. "Can we go outside?" he asked the Potions master timidly, pointing back toward the pine front doors.

The professor ceased his search to fix Draco with another of his piercing stares. Draco was certain for a moment that Snape would forbid it, but he merely said, "It's quite cold outside."

Draco shrugged. "I don't mind. It's quite cold inside, too."

Snape nodded.

Draco was at the doors first, his breath coming quicker, sharper, and lingering in mists that shimmered, golden, in the orange light of a few lit torches. He hesitated when it came to actually touching the door, though. Would the Dark Lord have set alarms around it as well as the door to Draco's bedroom?

The pine wood swung out at the pressure of Snape's long-fingered, gloved hand, however, and the rush of air that swept into Draco's face whipped away any of Draco's doubts. It was cold enough that it stung not only his face, his bare hands, but burned in his lungs, might have left a layer of frost inside them. The mists of his breath became great silver clouds as he strode out onto the stoop.

The moon was nearly full, high enough that it cast few shadows. It made the snow glitter. Diamonds, cut aquamarines, or fallen stars might have been hidden in the powdery white that lay several feet thick on the ground, burying several of the lowest steps; the benign twinkle was very like the blazing points in the pitch-dark sky and not unlike the look he had seen sometimes in Albus Dumbledore's blue eyes. Far beyond, the pines looked like they had been plastered with vanilla cake frosting. Draco felt his eyes grow wide to take it all in.

There was a faint chuckle from behind him. Snape had followed, having the sense to shut the door silently behind him. "I didn't know you enjoyed the winter so."

Draco couldn't quash the smile the was spreading across his numbing cheeks, though his response didn't merit it. "I haven't been outside since September. I hadn't realized how stale the air is inside the castle." He wanted to add too that he'd forgotten how beautiful nature could be, but thought it would sound weak.

"It keeps the cold out well enough." Snape stood beside him, joined him in staring out at the grounds. "And that's not weakness, appreciating your surroundings."

Draco looked up to find Snape suppressing a smile. "Didn't you have something to say to me, sir?"

"No. I think you have things to tell me."

Draco blinked. "Sir, I don't think--"

"We're alone, Draco. He won't hear you here."

Draco didn't need to ask who Snape meant. His eyes dropped to the step. A thin layer of snow was even here, though it seemed as though someone-- probably the elves-- had been trying to keep it clear. There was only enough to cling to his boots as he shifted his feet.

"I don't want to speak against him."

"You mean you've been taught not to."

Draco didn't want to agree. "You'll get in trouble, too," he mumbled.

Snape turned to face him. Draco felt his boring stare, but dared not look up to meet the gaze. "He won't find out." When Draco still kept silent, he added, "Your aunt might not know Occlumency's true purpose, but I do."

Draco sighed and through the frozen mist his eyes darted sideways to stare out beyond the frosted pine branches, toward England. "I just don't like it here. He tries, sir, he really does. He wants me to like it, to like him...." He turned his eyes up, met the black ones with his grey. "Why?"

"Ah, Draco. I said I'd let you talk, I didn't say I'd give you answers." Unless Draco was much mistaken, he thought by the blue moonlight he saw the corners of Snape's thin mouth turn upward. When Draco's fell, the professor added gently, letting himself recline against the cold stone of the high banister, "You're Lucius Malfoy's son, Bellatrix Lestrange's nephew. Being a Death Eater is in your blood. What would he do if you turned from him with Merlin only knows what secrets you've gleaned over the years?"

"What _would_ he do? If I decided I didn't want to do it anymore?" Draco kept his eyes down, not wanting Snape to read him, to reach into his mind.

"It's not really something I'd like to think about, Draco. I don't think you'd like it. But, then again, there are things far worse than death, though the Dark Lord doesn't believe it."

"I've heard some of the other Death Eaters talking. They wonder if you've turned. Wormtail in particular. He says you seem quite content at Hogwarts. Dumbledore likes you, trusts you." Draco chanced looking up to see if he could read any answers from the Potions master's sallow face, slightly green in this light.

But Snape chuckled again. "There's what I mean about you're being a liability. What else have you heard, Draco?"

Draco dropped his eyes back to the blanketed step. He kicked his toe into the snow; it was hard as ice, hurt to dent. When he had hit the stone beneath and could dig no further he asked, staring at the wet stone, "Take me with you?"

"Where?"

"Back."

"To Hogwarts?"

Draco nodded. "I'm a prisoner here, sir. He keeps me locked in a dungeon cell most of the time. He comes in at night to lock the door himself and I'm there till he comes for me in the morning. Only he can open it. I'm usually up to see him; I was always an early riser. We've had tea once or twice. But, sir, it doesn't help. I can't like him. I can't like this." He waved a hand back up at the castle. "I don't think I was meant to be a Death Eater. I can't even perform the Cruciatus."

"You've qualms against that one. There are other things you can do. Oh yes, Draco," he added for Draco's head, drooped in dejection, shot upward with a sudden flash of horror, "I know about that. Or some of it, I think."

"You won't tell--" Draco felt the color fading quickly from his cheeks, the fear flooding cold toward his stomach.

"Who would I tell? The Dark Lord? He agrees with your father, I believe may even be following his suggestion."

"If the Ministry ever--"

"If I haven't told them he's a Death Eater, do you really think I'd turn him in for using the Cruciatus once or twice on his son?"

"It's just... he'd blame me if if they ever heard about it, and then when he got out of Az--"

"I'm sworn to secrecy, if you want me to be," Snape said with a sharp sigh.

"Thank you." Draco's eyes slid again toward the western horizon. "So, _will_ you take me?"

"You know I'd like to, Draco. Slytherin's new seeker--"

"Please, sir. This is serious."

Snape sighed. "Then, seriously, Draco, you know I can't."

"I can't get out on my own."

"You're going to have to, if you want to get out at all. This isn't something I can help you with."

"Then tell me how. You're my Head of House. If you've gotten out--"

"Draco."

His suddenly sharp bark made Draco fall silent, drop his eyes to the snowcapped step once more.

Snape seemed to hesitate a moment, then his firm hand clasped Draco's shoulder again. His voice became softer, apologetic. "Draco."

Draco threw his hand off. "With all respect, sir, if you're not going to help me--"

"You know I would. You know I can't."

"I know nothing of the sort. I _think_ you _could_. I think you know how and I think you're being purposefully disobliging."

Snape's dark eyes narrowed. "You sound like your father," he said coldly.

Draco took a couple quick steps back, the snow beneath his boots crunching like glass shards. His eyes flew open. Color swept back into his face. His ears pounded with a tide of blood that rushed, suddenly hot, through him. His fists clenched. "Don't--"

Snape merely blinked, watching him. "I didn't realize you had grown so fearful of him."

"I'm-- I'm not afraid." But Draco knew Snape had read the emotion in his mind, that he couldn't contradict it. He feared that he was his father in miniature, as he had always trained himself to be. He feared he could not escape having the same fate. He feared he knew no other way to act. His gaze fell to the stoop again, his breathing slowed, deepened.

"I'm going inside now to await my turn with the Dark Lord. Are you remaining out here?"

Draco didn't respond.

"Have your aunt teach you Occlumency, Draco," Snape advised. "Make her feel useful."

"Yeah, okay," Draco mumbled. He didn't know why he was agreeing, feared his convict aunt, but also feared how easily Snape had been able to tear all his deepest secrets from him.

Golden light from the entrance hall spilled out onto the snow of the stoop, along with the sputter of guttering torches, the low murmurs of people in the great hall. Then it and Snape were gone behind the shut door.

Draco let himself sink to the snow, drew his legs tight to his chest, and draped the folds of his cloak over them and pulled his hood above his blonde head. His gaze trailed out across the long lawn, the gentle slope of the hill, the dip where the frozen lake lay, the great galleon of Durmstrang moored by the rocky shore. Its portholes were so frosted that each looked like a blind, cataracts-ridden eye. Draco remembered standing on the front steps of Hogwarts, framed by Crabbe and Goyle, surrounded by the other students, squealing, shrieking, craning their necks, or leaping backward as the black mast had broken the whitecapped surface of the lake. Who would have guessed the Triwizard Tournament would land him here, as the Dark Lord's favored pet?

Not long afterward, the screams began, echoing from inside the castle, long and unbroken. Draco pulled tighter into himself. His bones remembered that agonizing fire, stabbed in response to the nearby curse. His every muscle was tense. He guessed it was Avery.

---

"Draco?"

Draco did not respond, merely wrapped his arms tighter about himself. The dim golden light vanished from around him, his shadow died as the door was eased shut. Draco exhaled to have his breath cover his vision, the view of the silvery grounds obscured for a moment in a cloud as he heard the faint whisper of a light robe along the packed snow.

"Why are you not in bed?"

"You expect me to sleep?" Draco scoffed. "After what I've just heard? My nerves are still jangling."

"What did you hear?" The voice was a quiet hiss, steam from a fissure.

"You were torturing Avery. Like you tortured me."

"He disappointed me, failed me."

"He was trying to help you, from the sound of things."

The Dark Lord laughed. Where Snape's chuckle had been deep, low in the throat but alive like a stream over rocks, the Dark Lord's was a soft, broken hiss that caused Draco to shudder once violently. He hugged himself tighter as the Dark Lord said, "You will be a kind lord someday, Draco. Too easily pushed around, too forgiving of mistakes. Your servants will like you, but I doubt they'll obey you strictly."

"House-elves will have to. That's the bondage of their kind. I've nothing to worry about."

"Yes," the Dark Lord said slowly, softly. "House-elves will have to." There was a pause before the Dark Lord said, "Stand up, Draco. I don't feel like stooping tonight."

Draco sighed, but felt his legs, his bare hand push off from the snow-covered stone almost without his command. He was on his feet and facing the Dark Lord before he truly felt he had control of himself again.

He could see himself reflected in the silted pupils of the Dark Lord's blood-red eyes. The Dark Lord gave another sputtering hiss of a laugh and raised a long, white finger. It ran the length of Draco's cold chin, seemed to melt the skin around it but left a trail of frost where it touched. Draco's shivered, closed his eyes against the pale face, blue in this light.

"You have been doing it again, my Draco."

"What?"

"You are dreaming again of a way out."

Draco hesitated a moment. He opened his eyes, but kept them down. The Dark Lord was above him, Draco's back to the moon now sinking toward the pine trees that marked the world's edge for him. Draco's shadow faded into the black of the Dark Lord's airy robes so that it became hard to tell where the shadow ended and the Dark Lord's substance began. "Do you expect me to deny it, my lord?"

"You'd do well to."

"You'd know I was lying. And apparently you punish those who lie to you, even accidentally."

The Dark Lord drew in a long hiss. "Impertinent child!" His long fingers fastened on Draco's upper arm like a vise.

Draco drew in a quick hiss too, knew the fingers would leave purple shadows of themselves if they were not soon prised off. Draco raised his eyes to the Dark Lord's, still flashing with his furor. Draco knew he had gone too far. "I'm sorry, my lord."

The Dark Lord hesitated. Draco felt the fingers loosen marginally. Then the invasion began, the black, grasping tendrils reaching out, passing effortlessly through his skull to wrap themselves around the ribbon-thoughts of Draco's own mind. His teeth on edge, fighting off the wave of dizziness that accompanied the spell, Draco continued, "My lord, I wish I could like it here. I do. What would you have me do? What more would you have me try?"

"Your will is weak if you cannot make yourself like it here, Draco."

"I think, my lord, that's actually a sign of its strength."

The fingers twitched tighter. The pressure of Draco's constricted blood battered against the icy clasp, leapt in his arm. Draco winced, tried once futilely to throw his grip from him.

The Dark Lord's eyes were alight with a bright fire as he stared down upon Draco. Draco saw himself in the pupils, saw his own fear reflected back, his dropped jaw and wide eyes.

"You know," his voice was taut with suppressed anger, Draco sensed its thrum just below the silky purr of the words, "there was a culture I read about once, Draco, where a rebellious boy such as yourself could be brought to the town gates and to the elders by his parents-- or by me, in this case," he added as an afterthought, the corners of his thin mouth twitching upward in a way Draco did not very much like. "All we would have to say is, 'Our son is rebellious and stubborn. He does not listen listen to us when we discipline him.' It was something very like that. And the town would turn on the boy and stone him for his impertinence, his parents casting the first stone. What do you say to that, Draco?"

"I say that I'm glad I'm not part of that culture." He tried to to tug away again, but the Dark Lord's fingers held him fast.

"Perhaps not, but I do respect tradition and it is an ancient practice. And here I stand with you at the gate, Draco, and I am the elder and parent both. I have said the words."

"You wouldn't kill me," Draco said, not as confident as he endeavored to sound. "You've said yourself you need me."

"I need you only so long as you remain useful to me, Draco. I have no use for a boy without any loyalty. Yes, I'd like to keep you, but you make it difficult."

"_You_ make it difficult. Is it so wrong to want to be somewhere where I'm not property? Somewhere where I'm treated as something more than a bichon frisé?"

"You're my son. Did I not trust you tonight? Do you think that is a chance I would give my _bichon frisé_, as you call it, to attend one of my meetings without having been fully inducted?"

"That great snake of yours goes sometimes. I've heard them talk about her. You're not going to tell me she's like a daughter to you, are you?"

The corners of the Dark Lord's mouth twitched again. "Not quite. But even if Nagini were to turn against me, if she were sentient enough to do so-- and I sometimes believe she is intelligent enough to choose her own side-- I know few people to whom she could go to inform against me. Parseltongue is such a rare gift. You, on the other hand...."

Draco let his eyes trail west again, beyond the pines, now traced with silver where the moonlight touched them. Just beyond those trees....

The Dark Lord's long fingers reached out, his hand cupped on his chin and the icy fingertips pushed at his cheek, icicle points. Draco obeyed with a shiver and was looking into the Dark Lord's ember eyes, his palm pressuring his head back, craning his neck. If the Dark Lord had a knife, he could draw it across Draco's throat before Draco was any the wiser. "You give me far more to worry about," the Dark Lord finished. "You are rebellious," he said quietly, "and stubborn. You will not obey me. Yes," he breathed, "that was the phrasing of it."

The hand slid out from beneath his chin and Draco's gaze fell to the snow, dark with his own shadow. Still the Dark Lord kept a firm grip on his arm.

"Come inside now, Draco."

Draco nodded dully and was dragged up the steps. The Dark Lord tugged open the door and pulled Draco through it. It closed behind Draco with a crash that echoed in the lofty entrance hall, through the many arched openings into the corridors beyond. It echoed in Draco's ears too and reverberated against his heart, which matched its fading clangor. Draco kept his eyes on the door, dark and heavy and solid and opaque against the shining world beyond as he was trawled across the flagged stone and through the door at the end of the hall down the steep steps to his bedroom to be shut away for the night and to awake to the Dark Lord's pale face and long fingers.

_A/N: All right, so I've messed with JKR's timeline a little, I suppose. I think there's about a week between the Death Eaters' escape and Rookwood's meeting with Voldemort. But for compactness' sake, let's let that slide, shall we? Now, isn't Legilimency fun? And I'll give a great big gold star to anyone who can identify the culture Voldemort was refering to. In fact, I think you'd make my day! :) Now, here's one even the most amateur Legilimens could pull from my head: Please review!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	9. Don't Pry

_A/N: An interesting chapter this one turned out to be. I think you'll like it. Lots of minor-character characterization à la... someone I'm sure... not quite Harper Lee?_

_Yours forever, Tsona _

"Draco? Draco, are you with me?"

Draco kept his eyes fastened on the section he was reading on Occlumency and Legilimency. It seemed to him that the best way to deal with Nott's prying questions was to ignore him. He kept the old leather-bound propped up so that Theodore, sitting across the table, could not read the heading. "Nott, do we really need to discuss this _now_?" he asked lightly, turning the page; the section continued there; the two branches of magic seemed to be quite complex.

"With how carefully we're watched? When else would you like me to ask?"

"I'd rather you just didn't." Draco peered briefly over the top of the book. Theodore's eyes were hard with a blunt determination, the pale skin beneath his freckles icy-white above the thick, green and silver Slytherin scarf he had tied about his neck. His sandy locks stuck out from beneath a low, knitted cap.

Draco had met him alone in the corridor as he himself was sneaking away from the great hall and lunch. Theodore had looked carefully around and, seeing no one else in the chilly hallway, had asked him quietly, "Where are you going?"

Draco had tried to ditch him with a casual, "Nowhere in particular. Just not hungry."

Theodore had merely proceeded, "Can I come? I want to talk."

Since then, Draco had had to fend off Nott's interested, undertone inquiries about the Dark Lord and the Dark Arts as they had climbed the frosted steps and had moved through the towering bookshelves. The new administration preferred lecture- and experience-based learning to books; Draco wondered fleetingly if any of those left in charge of the school were even particularly capable readers. Or if none of them was able to pull off a decent translator spell; most of the books in the library were in Slavic languages, including the one Draco perused now. They had dismissed Durmstrang's librarian and had not bothered to install a new one. The peaked-roofed room therefore had the very disused air, the smell of ancient, mouldering books and dust stronger here than Madam Pince had ever allowed it to become in Hogwarts' library. Draco rather liked the atmosphere, its solitude. He could be fairly certain here he wasn't watched.

"But--"

"Nott, what is it to you what the Dark Lord's been doing with me?"

"I want to know," he said quietly.

"You mean you want to have knowledge that isn't meant for you. Honestly, Nott, do you want me to have to report you?"

"No," he said, cutting his eyes away.

"Then drop it and leave me alone."

"You didn't used to be this snippety."

"And you didn't used to be this annoying. You used to be quite good at letting me have my way."

Inexplicably, Theodore smiled, though he kept his gaze down. "I remember you at the Manor," he said softly. "I used to come over quite often, remember?"

"How could I forget?" Draco returned his gaze to the book before him. _'What is needed most in Occlumency is an ability to shut away--'_

"You were like a lord back then, even then, so in control of everything."

"And you were a sniveling servant," Draco lied, hoping the biting tone would cut short Theodore's nostalgic prattle.

"You're not that way anymore. Things have gotten out of hand for you, haven't they? I've noticed, your grades have gone down."

"Grades aren't everything, you know, Nott."

"They're worse than mine."

"Well, you always were cleverer."

"Perhaps," Theodore smirked. "But that was back at Hogwarts. This is the Dark Arts. I'd have thought you, with all your background, all your breeding--"

Draco glared over the book's pages again. "Your father's one of them, too, Nott. One of the originals, isn't he?"

"Yes, but Lucius Malfoy-- And your aunt! She's a piece of work, isn't she?"

"Yes," Draco said sourly. "I rather think so."

Bellatrix Lestrange, having adjusted to the time difference in only a matter of days, had that morning paraded through the students, between the benches in the great hall during breakfast, through the hallways between classes. She kept her nose up in the air, a proper aristocrat. During breakfast, she had turned on one of the students, who had leapt at her shrill screech. "Are you some common Mudblood? Where's your pride? You are training to be a Death Eater, for Merlin's sake! Tuck in your shirt! Don't make me do it for you," she had added, raising her wand threateningly. "And _you_," she had said, turning on the poor boy's giggling companion, who instantly stiffened, the laughter dying from his face. "Would it kill you to run a brush through your hair?" Draco had glanced toward the staff's table in time to see the Dark Lord watching her, catlike, above the brim of his crystal wineglass, his eyes glowing like embers. Draco hadn't remembered him having the bottle of merlot in front of him before and was fairly certain he had just summoned it from some cabinet.

Draco sighed, "Come on, Nott. We'll be late for class if we don't shove off soon." Draco tucked the book into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder.

"What's the book on, anyway? Was that a Russian title?"

Draco shook his head as they passed beneath the pointed arch of the library's doorway. "Lithuanian. Honestly, Nott, if you're going to live up here, you really ought to learn to distinguish between the different languages." He carefully avoided the book's title, which he thought might be too incriminating: _Magical Methods of Stealth and Concealment_ in translation.

Theodore cut his glass-green eyes away again. "I'm hoping to be reassigned."

---

Draco was kept busy in classes that day, and never quite dared to read his stolen book, even on his lap, under the Death Eaters' surveillance. In some lessons, it would have been impossible. Alecto Carrow set them the task of executing the _Avada Kedavra_ on a new set of wolf spiders and, though this was their second class at the exercise, by the end of a half hour, none of them had yet been able to produce more than a few harmless, pale green sparks from their wands. Draco had never expected the Killing Curse to be so universally difficult and wondered at the number of times the practicing Death Eaters must have pulled it off. Draco, remained a wary distance away from his spider, remembering the last Unforgivable he had attempted-- the spider's vehement charge, its snapping pincers-- but still kept catching sight of his intended victim's eyes and feeling his heart and stomach twist inside him, wrung by the great hand of his conscience, he reasoned. The spider occasionally clicked its pincers in a menacing fashion, but otherwise seemed so defenseless....

There was a blinding flash of emerald light, several cries, and a whooshing sound as though a gale were tearing through the classroom. Draco threw a hand up across his eyes. When the light cleared, they were all staring at Theodore Nott, who had his wand raised, pointed at the unmarked, unmoving body of his arachnid. He was breathing heavily, his eyes not moving from the corpse.

"I did it," he said weakly. "I did it."

"Well done, Nott!" Carrow cried, hurrying over, breaking the stunned silence left in the wind's wake. "Hasn't he done well?" she asked of the class, many of who rushed forward now to congratulate Theodore or to prod at the lifeless spider with their finger- or wandtips, making sure. Draco, who could feel the bile rising through his stomach, stayed where he was, leaned back against the desk. His own, very much alive spider scuttled uncertainly back from his trembling hands as they clutched the wood's edge.

"The Dark Lord will hear of this, Nott."

Draco was still feeling slightly queasy come dinner. Theodore was so swept by his own success, so regaled by other students' and even a few passing Death Eaters' congratulations and pleas for breakdowns of his technique, that he at last questioned Draco no further either about the book he had stashed away or about his dealings with the Dark Lord. Draco was able to force down whatever had been dished up by the disgruntled house-elves, and slip away easily.

He was just beyond the threshold of the great hall, when a hand fell on his shoulder.

For an instant, he thought it was Theodore, come to pester him still more, but Theodore's hand could be neither so large nor so heavy.

Draco, acting on impulse and training, leapt for his wand as he spun around to face his attacker and had it pointed into the chuckling face of the Mulciber before he realized who it was. Even then, he only lowered his wand a fraction. Mulciber was, after all, a convict. Whose side he had been working on was irrelevant, particularly when Draco had yet to establish any firm feelings of his own.

"Jumpy, boy?" he asked.

"You could have given me some warning."

"Why? I'm trained for stealth. You may as well know my strengths, mightn't you, young master?"

Draco could not tell whether the older man was mocking him or not. He had no response, so stayed silent.

"Your wand is still pointed, boy."

"I don't know you."

"No," Mulciber said, chuckling low again. "So, come with me and let's remedy that over a pot of tea."

"I've just had dinner," Draco protested as Mulciber stalked past him.

"It's cold in these corridors," Mulciber commented, without turning. "Even I notice it, and I was shivering in an Azkaban cell not long ago. No glass across those bars. Besides," Mulciber mounted the stone staircase to the upper levels, "you're an Englishman at heart and there's always time for tea, isn't there?" He paused several steps up and looked down at Draco, waiting for him to catch up.

Draco chanced a glance back into the great hall. The Dark Lord was watching him from the staff table, his skull-like face lent color by the orange torches. His red eyes caught Draco's and he gave a small nod. Having been let down in a hope of an escape and with obedience to the older man's plan now expected, he slouched toward the stairs, his wand still fisted in his hand.

"Good boy," Mulciber offered as Draco passed him. He threw an arm around Draco's shoulders, his hand surprisingly strong given his long imprisonment and age, and steered him up the stairs, talking about old times he had had with Draco's father. Draco tuned him out.

Soon, he was ushered into a smaller dorm. A twitch of Mulciber's wand set the logs in the stone fireplace alight. A pair of cotton-upholstered armchairs and a maple coffee table, set for tea, were arranged around it. There was also an unadorned writing desk and, Draco thought, quite a fine bed off to one side; it had a quilt, which was more than could be said for the students' accommodations. A second flick from Mulciber sent steam gushing from the spout of the copper kettle already hanging above the grate.

He strode past Draco and, as he bent over the fire to take off the hissing kettle, his silver hair fell down to frame his face, glinting with silver in the strong light. Draco had had very little time before to examine the man; he had been just another face from a wanted poster escaped from his picture as well as his cell. The firelight exaggerated the pits and lines of his old face, the deep hollows for his eyes, the translucence of his skin.___No wonder_, Draco thought, _he hasn't seen much light in Azkaban, poor bloke._ The light caught too on the small stiff hairs of his robe-- velvet, Draco realized-- as he pushed himself up with a knobby hand on his knee.

"What would you like?"

Draco thought about it a moment. "Earl Grey?"

The old man chuckled, "Fine taste. A proper Englishman's tea." He produced a tea bag with his wand, summoning it from some store, Draco was sure. It went into the white-glazed pot on the coffee table and was quickly deluged in a steaming stream.

He motioned Draco into one of the armchairs, easing himself laboriously into the other himself; stiffness too seemed to plague him. Mulciber relaxed deep into the cotton with an satisfied smile. Draco sat on the chair's edge-- the cushion was softer than he'd have liked-- not willing to relax in Mulciber's presence yet. He kept his wand out, across his lap. He'd have kept it in his hand still, but felt this would be highly impolite at tea.

"So," Mulciber said, "so far I know that you are Lucius Malfoy's son, look like you could be his self in miniature, and are fond of Earl Grey." He passed Draco a cup of the dark tea. "Tell me about yourself, Draco Malfoy."

Draco took a slow sip, regarding Mulciber over the ceramic brim. The tea's scent was faintly spicy, reminding Draco of warmer climes than this. "What do you want to know?"

"Anything," Mulciber said pleasantly. "That you're willing to tell me, of course. I used to work quite closely with your father, you know, and I made an effort before my arrest to get to know your whole family. You were quite young when I last saw you though." He stared at Draco with narrowed, blue eyes, deep set in beds of winkles, as though he could see the babe he had known superimposed over this older teen.

"I like Quidditch," Draco tried, keeping the conversation at a distance.

"As most young boys. Do you play?"

"Seeker."

"Yes, you are the right build. I used to play some myself. Has Slytherin a good team this year?"

Draco hesitated a moment. He hadn't anticipated the conversation coming to Hogwarts and wished it hadn't. He feared speaking about the place aloud only increased his desire to return to it. He feared his increasing desire made him an easier target for a Legilimens and didn't know if it was an ability Mulciber possessed, but those highly skilled in the Imperius were often gifted in other areas of cerebral influence. He felt something twist in his stomach. His answer came quietly. "I don't know."

Mulciber stared at him, silent, for some time, and Draco, waiting with bated breath, began to suspect he was right to suppose him a Legilimens. Then he said, "No. You wouldn't know, would you? It's been a long time since you've been back to the school."

"It has," Draco said, taking a great gulp of the tea. It scalded the roof of his mouth, the tip of his tongue, but he ignored these minor burns. They were nothing to deterring Mulciber from this subject. He cast about for something else to say. "What was Azkaban like?" The question had burst from him before he had paused to consider it. Mulciber's blue eyes flew open and Draco feared instantly that he had gone a step too far in quizzing the old man about that dreadful time. "Sir," Draco hastened to add to make the question seem more polite. Then, when that didn't feel like enough, with his head down, Draco mumbled, "You don't have to answer, sir. I mean, really, I--"

"No," Mulciber said, his voice suddenly low. "No. I'll tell you. You may as well know."

---

Draco left the room about an hour and a half later, shivering over the horror stories Mulciber had unraveled for him of dementors drifting lazily by in their ragged, weightless tatters; of the creatures pausing by the cell bars to take great rattling breaths and to hurry death and insanity of the unfortunate soul they turned their sightless faces towards; of the endless hours of silence, broken only by the moans of the dying man in the next cell and screams of someone down the hall; of watching that man being carried out unceremoniously and peering out the window to catch sight of them chucking him into a gaping pit, pushing only a modicum of dirt atop of his corpse; of the smell-- decay and death, mold and seaweed washed ashore. Draco had let him, had not regretted the question, for it kept them far from Hogwarts, far from any dangerous inquiries about Draco's thoughts. Mulciber did most of the talking from that moment on and Draco was able to merely sip his tea. It had accomplished what he had wanted, even if it had cost him, perhaps, a night of sleep, a week's pleasant dreams. All that he truly regretted was that when he had ventured to ask nervously near the end of the interview, "Do you know how the Dark Lord got you out?" Mulciber had had no answer.

Draco did not know his way through Durmstrang's passages nearly so well as he would have liked, and in this condition, he found himself getting lost in their turns and side corridors, even though he could easily have navigated in his usual state of mind.

He was thankful therefore when he saw a door ajar up ahead, a sliver of orange firelight filtering across the flagstones before it with the gentle hum of voices. If he could figure out where he was from whom he heard speaking inside.... It had to be one of the adults; students were all abed by this hour. The Dark Lord might even now be knocking on Draco's door.... How he was ever going to explain his tardiness.... Anything he tried in his head sounded too like an excuse, Draco thought, for the Dark Lord to gloss over the incident.

He was beside the door now, slowing to inch nearer the crack. The voices took on more distinct tones as he had hoped.

"Lucius, you can't possibly-- The boy's your son!" Draco's eyes widened. He had to restrain his fingers from reaching out to snag the door for balance as he sucked in a great breath. His mother! And she was talking about him. To his father.

"He might be my son, but more importantly, he's the Dark Lord's servant now, Narcissa." His father's tone was clipped, professional, indifferent.... "And I don't think the Dark Lord has time for unfaithful--"

"Unfaithful!" The word came as a shout from Draco's mother. She sounded almost faint with the suggestion. "Lucius-- don't-- he can't be-- Just give it time. Please."

"He's had time," his father said coldly. "Months. And every day he's left a nuisance here is a day we could have been putting forward more efforts on other projects of--"

"I would ask you, Lucius," said a high shiver of a voice-- the Dark Lord! Draco was outside the Dark Lord's office!-- "to allow _me_ to evaluate the value of my own projects."

"Of course, my lord," Lucius fumbled swiftly. "Of course, I merely meant--"

"You merely meant to advise me on something of which you know little. Stop your bumbling."

"Of course, my lord."

There was silence for a few moments. Then the Dark Lord spoke again, "The boy's behavior, this continued longing for what he has known-- it _is_ troublesome. But as I have told you before, Lucius-- many times, I believe, I need him. His life is more valuable to me than many things."

"My lord," this time a woman's voice, a low, breathy rasp, "I too would not like to see the boy killed unnecessarily, but, perhaps, if he will not obey you.... My lord deserves only the most obedient, the most faithful--"

"Bella, you say that only because you count yourself among that rank. And your only concern for the boy is whether he makes you farther from my inner circle or nearer. I did not bring you all here to discuss your own advancements or slippages."

"My lord," Bellatrix Lestrange, Draco's aunt, complained, her voice low, anxious, trembling even, "it's the not that. The boy's family. Cissy's son. My nephew."

The Dark Lord hissed. "Twice wrong, Bella. Do not lie to me. And when have I ever cared for family? No," the Dark Lord sighed, "I need some sort of intervention, but death is far too harsh. I need the boy alive still. Unless he does get back to Dumbledore. Perhaps if it does come to that Severus can--"

Draco's mother gave a shivering, soft scream.

"My lord," Draco's father tried again, "he knows so much already. He is so far inside. Isn't it unwise to allow him even the _chance_ to break free, the chance to get back to Dumbledore, of all men?"

"Lucius, you're doing it again."

"But, my lord, if Dumbledore obtains that information-- and such a vessel! We don't exactly understand the symptoms of the spell, he could have_ infinite_ knowledge of all your plans for all we--"

"He does not have _that_, Lucius," the Dark Lord said simply.

"My lord, _please_--" Narcissa this time "--even if he does get away, isn't there some sort of... can't you just make him... forget...."

The Dark Lord sighed. "I see this won't get anywhere. I hoped for advice. I was wrong to hope. I ought to have known that these things are always best just worked out between the two parties involved. Now, if you'll all excuse us, Draco's here for _his_ meeting."

With those words, the door swung inward and left Draco standing foolishly between the jambs.

_A/N: Hmmm.... I think I'd actually like to end this chapter there. It keeps you and I both engaged in the action. Yes, I'm afraid that's all you'll get out of me for now. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Now you and I can both look forward to the next. Cheers!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	10. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

_A/N: And now, continuing from where I left you all. Enjoy!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

"_You!"_

Draco straightened himself, quickly applied the Malfoy mask of his training, his expression sobering, dropping his head slightly to hide the last remnants of fear, of involved interest in his face. With the door open, his mother's paperwhite perfume reached toward him, making him feel as dizzy as ever, too sweet, too strong, floral to his nose and sugar to his tongue. He kept his eyes turned away from her, even as the scent reminded him of days spent in the halls of Malfoy Manor, brighter, warmer corridors despite the muttering portraits of dead ancestors. "Hello, Father. Mother. Erm, Aunt Bellatrix."

As he stole a glance at her, raising his head an inch, his mother beamed at him, his aunt's lips curled back above her teeth in what she clearly meant as a gesture of goodwill, but his father snarled, "Don't you--"

"Lucius!" The Dark Lord, from his seat behind a mahogany desk, raised one long-fingered, white hand in his father's direction. Draco saw his father's eyes dart once to it, then his lips fasten shut. "Come inside, Draco," the Dark Lord said softly.

Draco glanced at his mother again, who smiled, and took the several steps across the threshold. The door slammed to behind him. A roaring fire hissed in the grate, its light catching on the long, coiled body of a great snake that lay on the hearth rug. Draco's eyes locked on the lengths of fearful muscle and he dared not look away, even when he heard the Dark Lord's soft, "Ah."

The wizard let out a series of short hissing sounds and the snake lifted a weary head, glanced at him with golden eyes cut down the middle by slit pupils. Then she turned her head to Draco, who found the air catching in his lungs in a sharp gasp.

"Draco," the Dark Lord said, "meet Nagini."

Unsure what else to do, he said, "Hello," though his voice trembled.

The Dark Lord translated and the snake bobbed her head once before lowering herself to the ground again.

"It's too cold for her here. That's why she stays here all day," the Dark Lord said. Though Draco was still frozen, gazing at the great beast before him, he could feel the heat of the Dark Lord's stare. "She won't hurt you," the Dark Lord added after a moment, "she won't hurt anyone unless I tell her too."

Draco wrenched his eyes from her, turned them instead to the skull-like face of the Dark Lord. "I know," he said softly.

"Then we can move on," the Dark Lord concluded. "We have just been discussing what to do with you, Draco, perhaps you heard?"

"I did," Draco admitted. "And I really am trying."

"Liar!" his father hissed.

Again, he was silenced by the Dark Lord's raised hand. "No, Lucius. The boy does not lie. He tries, or has tried in the past to do what we require of him, even now I think there is some small part of him that yet yearns to succeed. But you have not, have you, Draco?"

"My lord--"

"Just answer me."

"No, my lord."

"No, you haven't. And that puts me in a very disagreeable position. As much as I have tried to make you into the man, the servant I wanted, you have failed me. I think you know, Draco, what usually becomes of those who fail me?"

Draco nodded. The air was tight in his lungs, wasn't quite getting to his brain, was making him dizzy.

"So what am I to do, Draco? How long am I to make an exception for you? How long am I to wait?"

Draco swallowed, "Well, my lord--" his own voice sounded distant to his ears "-- I'd say you ought to wait... forever."

"Impertinent--" Draco's father didn't even get to finish his sentence this time.

"Yes, you'd like that." Draco saw the Dark Lord reach into his pocket, draw out the long yew wand. He ran his left hand over the smooth wood, stroking it as he had stroked Draco's cheek so often. "But I think you know that that may well be impossible."

"I do, my lord, but--"

"But?"

The Dark Lord waited, watching him, Draco cast his eyes about the dark, shadowy room, cast a net out into the pool of his thoughts and memories, hoping to dredge up something, anything to talk his way out of this. All he came up with was, "You said you didn't want to. You said you needed me. More than the others."

"And I do, Draco. Or I did. But what use has anyone for a broken wand?"

Draco gulped past the knot of fear in his chest. It left his mouth dry. "So," he said.

"So," the Dark Lord replied.

The silence in that room hung, panted, waited, but no one seemed willing to fill it. His Aunt Bellatrix turned grey eyes, almost hungry, from the Dark Lord's pale face to Draco's, as though watching a tennis match. No one spoke. Until the snake-- Nagini-- lifted her head. Her forked tongue flickered out and she turned her golden eyes on Draco. The tongue flickered again. Then she turned her head to the Dark Lord and let out a soft hiss.

The Dark Lord let out a long slow breath, hissing back.

"Are you going to kill me?" Draco asked, his voice rasped somewhat, embarrassed him.

"That's what Nagini has just asked."

"And what did you tell her?"

The Dark Lord regarded him for some minutes longer. "Not yet. I don't think so."

"But my lord," Draco's father broke in, "surely--"

"You _want_ me to kill your only son, Lucius?"

Draco's mother whimpered.

"Well, my lord," Lucius said slowly, "why should he be treated differently than... than any of the rest of us? It'll go to his head, my lord."

"He's_ not_ like the rest of you," the Dark Lord said sourly. "And if I followed your advice, he won't have a head for my... _mercy_--" he pronounced the word as though tasting it "--to go to."

"Mercy. That's not something I often hear you speak of, my lord." Lucius' eyes were narrowed, veins of silver in a marble face.

The Dark Lord regarded him with raised eyebrow ridges. "Besides, Lucius, I can remember a young man, not much older than your son, who thought quite highly of himself when first he came to me. I seem to remember a great deal inflating his head and yet I never raised a finger to _him_... on that account."

Lucius cut his eyes away, his expression softened and he murmured, the fear returning to his voice, "Of course, my lord. Forgive me. My lord always was merciful."

"I'm not sure it's _my_ forgiveness you need on this account, Lucius. But for now, let us pass over that. The time will come for that conversation." He turned his burning gaze upon Draco again, whose round eyes had traveled between the two men throughout this exchange. "You remember our conversation of the other night, Draco?"

Draco nodded numbly. _There was a culture where a rebellious boy such as yourself could be brought to the town gates. And the town would turn on the boy and stone him for his impertinence._

"We are again before the gates," the Dark Lord said. "That same culture said, Draco, that forty lashes would kill a man, but that thirty-nine was an acceptable punishment."

"So you'll beat me to the brink of death, but not beyond it." His mouth was still dry, his voice still hoarse.

The Dark Lord nodded once. "I think, Draco, that perhaps a small reminder..." He raised his wand high in the air. "Shall we begin?"

Draco's eyes flew to the yew wand. He could feel its power building beneath the blunted tip. "What will you do?"

The wand snaked through the air and a long line of black shot forth from it. The tip of the spell struck Draco across the shoulder. The lash cut across the flesh there, took the skin up so that the hand that flew instinctively to the site as Draco cowered beneath the lash came away bloodied.

"Draco, I have warned you again and again that I cannot tolerate disobedience from you, any sympathy for my enemies. And yet these feelings still seem to arise in you. Do you deny it?"

The wand lashed out again, the spell caught him on the other shoulder. Draco was ready this time, had gotten his knees locked beneath him, but even so he bent beneath the burning pain of the contact.

"No, my lord."

"Then you understand. These feelings are like a growth in you, Draco, a thorn bush I keep cutting to the roots, but which keeps coming back."

This time the spell struck him in the stomach, bent him double.

"I must purge it, Draco, if I cannot talk this weed out of existence, then I must use fire."

This time across the shoulder blades. His knees were shaking beneath him, threatening to collapse beneath the weight. "My lord, the-- the Cruciatus seems more-- more like fire."

The Dark Lord laughed softly. "You think I have but one trick, Draco?"

The second lashing across the shoulders sent him to the floor, where he cowered on his knees and elbows, his face down and his hair a thin, useless veil between Draco and the red eyes that were beginning to burn all the more fiercely with the thrill of pain.

"No, I have many. And you have grown accustomed to the Cruciatus."

This time the lash was able to cross his whole back lengthwise.

"Enough to ask for it. It is not a punishment for you, not like this. Your mind blanks out during that spell, doesn't it, Draco? Is overwhelmed?"

The first line across his back was crosshatched.

"Yes." The word trembled from his lips.

"Not during this, Draco. No. I want you to consider each lash, feel each. I want you to think of your sins, remember them as I hurt you this time."

The next spell scoured his neck, sent Draco's forehead into the floor, a moan pushed from where it had hidden in his throat.

"Perhaps that way, we might make some progress. Perhaps these lashings will mean something to you."

This time, across his hands where they laid fisted before his face. The spell burned too as it passed close to his face, a wave of heat that was enough to make him recoil even as he drew in a sharp breath at the pain smarting across the backs of his hands.

_A/N: Sorry this one was so short, I cut it at the natural break and hoped that would work, despite its length. Please read and review. Chapter 11 will be up very shortly; it's already written and just needs to be edited, but it will be up quicker if I get reviews on this one. ;)_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	11. Forty to Six Feet

_A/N: Hmm... what to say, what to say? I really can't say anything without spoiling the chapter, so just enjoy!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

The stone of the floor was cold against Draco's cheek, his flat palms and fingers. He didn't mind the rough edges of the tiles, they didn't hurt him, though he could feel their irregularity beneath him. Of more concern to him was his breath, which scraped at his throat, as it pushed past his bitten lip, bleeding still somewhat. He had done all he could to contain the shouts, the whimpers that had come toward his lips. By and large, he had succeeded, though each lash of the Dark Lord's wand had sent him nearer the ground till now he lay flat against it, listening to his own hoarse breath, feeling the stone beneath him.

From some distance he heard his aunt's voice, known only by its unfamiliarity, a rough and rasping, low voice. "Is he.... Will he be all right, my lord?"

Draco's mother, Narcissa, broke off her broken sobs, held her breath to hear the response.

"Oh yes." The Dark Lord's voice like velvet, smooth in one direction, but always with that possibility of roughness.

There was a pause and Draco knew the Dark Lord was standing before him when, through the veil of his platinum locks, he saw the hem of his black robe, his feet. "Yes," the Dark Lord said again. "I think he will be quite fine." Then to Draco, he said, "Get up."

Draco fisted his hands, used the knuckles to lever his body from the floor. A moan could not be held back. He ached all over. He got himself crossed-legged on the floor before he looked up into the Dark Lord's skull-like face, looming above him, seeming to hover above the black of his robes, in the darkness of the room. For a moment, looking up made his head spin, his vision blur, but the sensation passed quickly and he was left looking into the red eyes. They were not furious as he had expected them to be, nor were they even still glowing with the adrenaline of his spelling. They were thoughtful, considering.

"Whatever culture you've been talking about," Draco said, his voice rasping like his aunt's, "I think they know what they're talking about."

Draco thought he saw the corners of the Dark Lord's mouth twitch, but couldn't be sure.

"They were a prolific nation. They passed down more medieval methods, if you'd like a demonstration."

"I'll pass," Draco said quickly, putting a hand up to his nape. He could feel the welts rising on the skin there, and quickly withdrew it with a wince.

Draco was more sure of the spasm of his mouth this time. "So," he said, "you've had time to think over your transgressions. Is there anything you'd like to say?"

Draco pulled a face. "If I say 'no,' is there further whipping involved?"

"Perhaps," the Dark Lord admitted.

"Even though it might well kill me?"

"Draco, I've been lenient."

Draco dropped his eyes to his ankles, where his legs crossed in their dark jeans. "Yeah," he sighed. "I suppose you have." He curled his long fingers about his calves, they looked very pale against the navy fabric, the dark red line that crossed both backs of his hands bold. "And it probably is more than I deserve."

"Go on," the Dark Lord prompted.

Draco's eyes cut sideways to where his father stood, perched on the balls of his feet, the grey eyes narrowed as they stared at his son. There was a faint gleam as of fire in them. Draco had seen that same glare many times before; it appeared in Lucius Malfoy's eyes every time his heir upset him, had disappointed him, and Draco thought, that seemed to happen often. His lips were pressed tight, but otherwise his face was marble.

"Draco." The Dark Lord stooped and he laid one long finger beneath Draco's chin, pushing it upright. That finger may as well have been a brand in its iciness.

"My lord." His father's voice was sharp, resounding as the fracturing of ice in that dark room. The Dark Lord lifted his red ember eyes to him, though he kept his finger on Draco, holding him still. Draco felt his ragged gasps scraping against its pad as he breathed.

"The boy," his father continued, "clearly has not taken your instruction seriously enough. I truly do feel--"

"Your faith, Lucius, is weak." The Dark Lord's voice was a smouldering hiss. "You wish to rescind the gift, the sacrifice you gave to me long ago. I place too much value on your lamb and fail to see you as the generous donor. But you forget, Lucius, when I left, you tried to weaken the lamb that was already in my service, already mine, to destroy the very gift you'd given. I have not forgotten, nor has he, nor will I."

As he spoke, the Dark Lord's expression grew fiercer, the eyes glowed more brightly and narrowed, the lines of his forehead deepened. Draco, even catching the expression sidelong, had to cower. Lucius shrugged his shoulders, retreated into a hunch, fisting his hands by his sides, dropping his steely eyes to the floor. He looked, Draco thought with awe, like a rebuked dog, still lingering densely by its master's side despite its fear of punishment.

"My lord," the beaten man said, "I never meant--"

"You meant every curse, Lucius, every cruel word, every glare. Do not _lie_ to Lord Voldemort."

All three of the Death Eaters shuddered at the name. Draco flinched and the Dark Lord's eyes flickered to him momentarily. But his attention was soon again grabbed by Lucius.

"My lord, you were gone. We were all so sure--"

"And if I was gone--" The Dark Lord cut himself off and his wide, flaming eyes flew to Draco, who met them with a shiver. "You ought to have known I was not gone," the Dark Lord said to Lucius, though he kept his smouldering eyes on Draco.

"Of course, my lord," his father murmured.

"Draco, your word. Your word you'll do better from now on-- I still need it." The Dark Lord's slitted nostrils flared, the eyes were torrents of fire.

Draco bit his lip, felt the finger press deeper into his chin and stiffened, its nail digging into the flesh there. He couldn't look at him. He cut his eyes away. They landed on the fire, the orange flames leapt up the flue. "My lord," he said quietly, "we've had this same conversation again and again."

"I know that, Draco." The hand scraped down his neck, leaving an icy trail and the snared his wrist instead, viselike.

Draco looked into his eyes, trembling in the clamp of his spidery hand. "Don't you think-- My lord, I have been trying-- I don't know what else--"

"Still you deny me?"

"My lord, I don't know what else to do!"

The Dark Lord hissed, his hand tightened on Draco's wrist and Draco grit his teeth, bit back a hiss himself.

"I don't want to give you a faulty promise," Draco said quietly, looking straight into the firestorms of his eyes. "It'll only cost me more later."

The Dark Lord stared at him, the slit pupils sliding from one of Draco's eyes to the other. Draco sought to remain still, to keep his eyes open, allow the glow of the Dark Lord's eyes to blister his retinas. Without a warning, the Dark Lord let out a roar and leapt back to his feet, leaving Draco on the floor. Everyone in the room jumped. Draco's mother whimpered. The snake raised its head again and hissed, her tongue flickering hopefully. The yew wand was aimed straight at Draco, who could do no more than stare up at the Dark Lord, certain that he had gone too far, that his end had come.

The Dark Lord drew back his hand, the wand whipped through the air, trailing that snake of black. The spell broke across Draco's face, slashing him from his chin, across the bridge of his nose and up his forehead. The pain of the lash welled in his eyes. His heart hammered against his chest, seemingly furious at not having been released from its fleshy prison, still desperate to escape. His breaths were deep gasps as he tried to come to grips with what had happened, the near miss.

The Dark Lord turned his back on them all, bending over the mahogany desk. "Forty lashes," he said quietly. "Enough to kill a man."

They all waited. Draco, not sure what to do, looked around at his mother. Her full lips slightly parted, her blue eyes fixed on the Dark Lord. Her husband beside her was still and statuesque, rigid. His Aunt Bellatrix leaned forward slightly toward her master.

"My lord?" she said after a minute's cautious silence.

"Go," the Dark Lord said. "The boy is dead. I have killed him."

"But my lord--" Draco's father tried to argue.

"Go," he said again, more firmly, growled.

Narcissa grabbed at her husband's sleeve, tugged on it to get his attention and then slipped away toward the door, silent as any specter. On her way out, she glanced down at Draco and her gaze was compassionate, sad. His father glared at him as he passed. Draco ducked away from him, fearing the steel serpent head of his cane, but his wife was pulling him by too quickly for him to get a proper swing. Bellatrix lingered a moment longer, then she stamped across the room. As she was passing, she bent and grabbed Draco roughly by the arm with a growl of "Come on!" She hauled him to his feet and dragged him out the door, which slammed shut behind them as if of its own accord.

When she had him in the cold corridor, she threw him around until he was standing facing her and he was clasped between both her unmanicured hands. "You, boy-- What were you thinking? How dare you say such a thing to--"

"I've heard what he's done to those who lie to him, Aunt Bellatrix. He'd know. What good would that have done?"

"He's going to kill you, boy. You heard him? He's going to kill you."

"I know." Draco was surprised to hear himself say it so evenly.

His aunt held him still a moment, her gray eyes moved back and forth between his as the Dark Lord's had, the tip of her tongue sneaking out to wet her chapped lips. Her gaze was easier to hold and couldn't upset Draco. "You're mad," she proclaimed.

"Maybe," Draco agreed. Other Death Eaters had suggested it before. "Aunt Bellatrix?" he said after a moment.

"Auntie," she said sharply.

"What?"

"When you were born, Cissy and I decided I would be Auntie Bella. I guess she hasn't spoken much about me." A shadow passed across his aunt's face.

Draco, having his favor to ask of her, decided to humor her. "Auntie Bella?" he tried again.

"Yes?"

"I have something I need to ask."

"Go on, then."

"Professor Snape told me you were an Occlumens. He said you could teach me."

"You want to learn Occlumency? From me?"

Draco nodded, keeping her gaze.

"Why not just ask your precious Professor Snape?" she sneered. "The Dark Lord obviously thinks him better than I at it."

"I want you," Draco lied.

Bellatrix smiled at him. "I'll teach you, Draco. When can I come to see you?"

_A/N: I have high hopes for this chapter. I think it might be the chapter that breaks the long pattern you and I have been suffering in. Perhaps you don't see it? It's so hard for me to know, particularly as I'm receiving so few reviews (have I gotten any?) on this version 2. One way or another, chapter 12 is begun and I very much enjoy its beginning, so hopefully it sha'nt be long till I get up the next chapter. In the meantime, please leave me a review and give me an incentive to finish this. Please._

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	12. For One Great Jump

Draco left a note on his pillow asking for essence of dittany the next morning in hopes that the house-elves would find it when they came into his room to tidy. He had woken aching all over and rolled out of bed most unwilling. The new skin over his rising welts stretched painfully with each movement. The lines still showed plainly, a rusty red, across the backs of his hands and he guessed, touching his fingers gingerly to his nose, that the most recent cut across his face did as well. He couldn't look forward to the questions his classmates-- and particularly Theodore, Crabbe, and Goyle-- would ask him. He could only be thankful they couldn't see the scarring wounds across his back and that his hair, grown longer since he had left England, would cover the worst of them across his nape.

As Draco pulled on his fur-lined boots, his thoughts wandered toward Dobby, his family's old house-elf. At the Manor, three years ago, before Potter had freed the elf, Dobby would have been at his side the moment Draco had managed to drag himself to bed. He'd have had the dittany ready and maybe spells as well. He'd have stayed with him till he fell asleep, maybe even curled up and slept at the bed's foot, and been there when Draco awoke.

Draco had once gotten horribly sick, when he was eight-- influenza the healer had said-- and Dobby had stayed by his side the entire week and half, trying to get him well, to keep him in bed, but not bored, had run back and forth between the bedroom, the library, and the kitchen. Everything-- even the chicken soup-- Dobby had brought to him then had been made with oranges-- flavored with orange juice or orange peels or garnished with orange sections. For breakfast it was a whole orange or an orange scone and a glass of orange juice. Even now, Draco avoided the fruit on principle and recoiled from the smell.

Draco felt the corners of his mouth drag down at the thought of the elf's toothy grin, his green, globular eyes gleaming as he had put the breakfast tray on Draco's bedside table and propelled himself on thin arms to the mattress.

His stomach seemed to knot as he dropped the boot laces and let his eyes wander toward the smooth stone that the elf had given him the night he had snuck into the Manor to say his goodbyes. It lay on top of the bookshelf, above Grindelvald's diary, _Secrets of the Darkest Arts,_ and _Magical Methods of Stealth and Concealment_ hidden behind the pair. Draco remembered the moon shining silver in Dobby's green, orb-like eyes, the broad grin-- broader than Draco had ever seen it-- on his face. Draco had often wondered where the elf had found the stone. It reminded him of the stones on the small, bayside beach that at low tide appeared at the base of the headland cliffs on which Malfoy Manor rested. Draco's favorite tutor had taken him there on occasion. He remembered grinning at Prentice Greengrass' smooth excuses as he had looked coolly into his father's glare. _We're studying ecology, biology, geology, earth science, physics..._ None of those things had meant anything to Draco then.

He pushed himself to his feet, took one final look at the smooth black stone and, snatching his cloak off the desk chair, strode out into the narrow, dark, and dank corridor. The Dark Lord had unlocked his door without coming in, if he had ever locked the door last night; Draco had fallen asleep without hearing the click of the lock.

--

"My God, Draco!"

Draco sighed. "Hello, Theodore."

"What's happened to you?"

"Your face is all funny," Crabbe gaped from across the table.

Draco had been thinking about this as he climbed the disused steps from the dungeon to the ground floor and along the entrance hall to the great hall. "I tried to go for a fly last night. The enchantments around this place are strong though."

He sank onto the long bench at the table, poured himself a bowl of granola beneath the avid stare of Theodore Nott, Crabbe, and Goyle. "Pass the milk?"

Goyle snatched the jug away from young, blond-headed Faelan Rowle with a growl.

"Thanks," Draco muttered, taking the pewter handle from him.

"So what happened? With the broom?" Theodore pressed.

"I hit the barrier," Draco lied, spooning up some of the cereal. "Like a stone wall, it was. I fell, smashed the broom."

"The Nimbus 2001?" Theodore moaned.

Draco missed a beat. Would he need that broom again? _Could_ he fly out of the grounds? He doubted it very much. He shrugged. "It wasn't top of the line anymore anyway. There's the Firebolt, like Potter has."

Draco turned, the back of his neck prickling, to meet the Dark Lord's fierce, firestorm glare, the red eyes flown open as he sat at the center of the staff table. The headmaster's seat, Draco realized, the seat where Dumbledore ought to sit. The red eyes narrowed. His mouth was a very thin, straight line across his white, skull-like face. Draco shivered beneath the glower, but tried to smile up at the wizard. It was the first look the two had shared since the Dark Lord had pronounced him dead and Draco had to hope that even now, perhaps, he might buy himself one more chance.

Nott turned too, following Draco's gaze, but he quickly turned away with a shudder. Draco guessed he too could feel the heat of frustrated power that seeped from the Dark Lord, like rising water, toward Draco.

"My God, Draco," Nott said again in a hoarse whisper. His voice rose with his horror to a shrill, "What have you done? That's not about a broom..."

Draco shook his head, still holding the Dark Lord's fearsome gaze, trying to grin through the trembling that had taken hold of his fingers and was creeping up the nerves of his arms.

"He's angry," Crabbe mumbled unnecessarily.

--

Signs were up by lunchtime. The convicts were all growing restless, freed but still shut up inside the castle, prisoners as Draco was. Now, they were doing something about it. They had appealed to the Dark Lord, no doubt, or been incited by him to begin teaching his pupils how to Apparate. Draco was standing before a poster near the front doors of the castle when Theodore came up behind him. Theodore kept his eyes away from Draco's scarred face.

"Wicked!" the other boy exclaimed, quickly reading the sign.

Draco shrugged but was holding back a smile. Apparition, the magic of disappearing from one place and appearing in another. He knew one couldn't Disapparate from inside the Durmstrang grounds, the Dark Lord would have seen to that precaution; Hogwarts had it. The rush of wind that preceded and ended every Death Eater meeting Draco had yet witnessed confirmed his guess. He had noticed it was only after this gale that the Death Eaters could Apparate in or Disapparate out. But even the Dark Lord couldn't extend his influence indefinitely. How far could the spell reach? Draco, as he led the way into the great hall, looked toward the row of square windows behind the staff table. The sky was blue today, pale and icy, but nevertheless clear. Through the glass he could see the jagged outline of the snow-covered mountains that fenced the grounds, the dark green of the pine forests that climbed their lower slopes. Surely, Draco thought, his influence could not stretch far into that woods. Probably, just beyond the grounds' end...

"Look! Fish and chips!" Theodore said, grabbing for a plate and grabbing Draco from his thoughts.

Draco looked about at the fried fish and potato wedges. "Someone must have tipped off the house-elves," Draco agreed, accepting the plate Theodore passed him. Theodore still wouldn't look at his face.

"This day gets better and better. English food _and_ we get to work with some of the most renowned Death Eaters out there! Learning some of the coolest magic!"

"Yeah," Draco murmured. "Real great."

"So are you going to tell me," Theodore pressed, dropping his voice again, "what really happened? If you don't want Crabbe and Goyle to know..." The two had yet to arrive.

Draco shook his head mutely and bit into a chip. He glanced quickly around the table, but it was more boisterous than usual and no one was paying them any mind. "You're clever, Theodore. But I won't tell you."

Theodore opened his mouth, but at that moment Crabbe and Goyle lumbered up to them and collapsed on the bench opposite.

--

The Apparition lessons were to happen after dinner and were mandatory for anyone seeking to enter the Dark Lord's service the posters proclaimed. Theodore brought a filched library book-- or maybe it was his own-- with him to dinner and went on about the theory and practice of Apparition that its pages contained. Draco, edgy at the thought of having to spend time with his lunatic aunt and the rest of the convicts, found his continuous jabber irritating, though he preferred it to Theodore's vain attempts to draw his secrets from him. Yet after perhaps twenty minutes, he could take no more, and snapped, "You sound like the Mudblood Granger, Theodore. Do us all a favor and shut up."

Theodore turned his green eyes on Draco. For a moment it seemed he would retaliate, but then he merely snapped the book shut and buried himself in the thick vegetable stew the house-elves had served tonight.

When dinner ended, much to Draco's displeasure, it was the Dark Lord himself who ordered them all to stand and who swept the tables and benches up against the walls, creating a fairly open space in the middle of the hall, such as Draco had seen when the Death Eaters gathered. He dropped his eyes as the Dark Lord's gleaming gaze swept around the hall, and Antonin Dolohov, with his twisted face, barked at them to spread themselves out. Theodore was standing a few feet beside Draco and Crabbe and Goyle were behind them. Mulciber, his father's old partner, raised his wand and a wooden hoop clattered in front of each of the students.

"Nice one," Dolohov commented to the older, white-haired man.

Mulciber shrugged, "It's what we used when we were learning."

"Okay, everyone," Dolohov called to the students, "the object is to try and land yourselves inside those hoops. That's as far as any of you will be going for a while."

"Apparition is really pretty simple," said Mulciber. "It's all about being sure of yourself."

"You have to clearly think about the place you want to be-- inside these hoops tonight--" said the pockmarked Rookwood, stepping up beside Dolohov, "and then you simply step forward and turn, picturing yourself in the space."

"Like this!" Bellatrix Lestrange stepped forward and did a sort of pirouette, the skirt of her robe swirling around her, and reappeared with a crack like a whip beside the door so that the people standing nearby jumped, some cowering.

Some of the youngest students broke into a smattering of excited applause. They were very young, Draco thought, to be even considering magic like this. England's Ministry of Magic didn't issue licenses until a wizard was seventeen; even Draco, who would be sixteen in June, was young to be trying this.

"Destination, determination, and deliberation, that's what our instructors used to say," said Mulciber, nodding his head. "Only be sure to think _only_ of the inside of your hoops. We don't want anyone splinching."

"No," agreed Rookwood, "but Miss Strout managed to make it here just in case." He waved a big hand at a tiny witch in Death Eaters' garb hidden in a corner of the room. She raised a hand and waggled fingers in a dragonhide glove at them.

"All right, you think you've all got that?" Dolohov asked.

People nodded their heads and there was some murmuring of agreement.

"Go!" shouted Rabastan Lestrange.

Draco stared at the inside of the hoop. _I want to go there_, he told himself. _Inside the hoop. Inside the hoop and then to Hogwarts._ He stepped forward into the turn, screwing his eyes shut. Something seemed to strike him from the side and he hoped, for a second as he threw his arms out to balance himself, that it had worked. When he opened his eyes, though, he was standing outside the hoop, looking down at stone floor of the hall.

Draco shot a look around at all the others. Several of the students had ended up on the floor. No one had landed inside their hoops, though one of the youngest shot a quick look around the hall and then merely leapt into the hoop the way he would jump into a puddle, wellingtons first. His celebration dance even looked like he was splashing about. Draco tried to contain the smile he felt slipping onto his face.

"What are you all looking about for?" Dolohov snapped. "We've done what we can. The rest is up to you lot. Try again."

They did, with no better results. Draco was beginning to get a headache from all of it when, several attempts later, there was shriek. Cat Yaxley had splinched herself. She wobbled on the spot, both her arms back where she had started, lying on the floor and beginning to leak blood onto the floor. Miss Strout waved her wand from the corner and there was a great puff of purple smoke that left poor Cat inside the hoop, bawling, but her arms reattached. Bellatrix strode over and yanked Cat to her feet and Miss Strout, tutting, led her from the hall as the whispering started; Bellatrix stayed behind.

"Bound to happen," called Mulciber over the heads of the students. "Splinching happens fairly frequently in the beginning. You've just got to be very sure that you want to leave, which the poor girl wasn't."

The lesson went on in the same way, with so many fruitless tries. Draco merely stood there the last ten minutes, a hand to his head. It felt as though a mallet were trying to pound through his temple from the inside. He felt faintly nauseous. In the chaos of the hall, he doubted anyone even noticed him, but--

"Malfoy." It was a faint hiss and Draco opened his eyes, let his vision swim and let a blur of white, red, and black resolve itself into the Dark Lord's face hovering above his robes.

"My lord," Draco murmured.

"You're not practicing."

"I'm sorry, my lord. Headache."

The Dark Lord frowned deeply and Draco's vision blurred, his head spun again. He thought he might just topple sideways onto the floor.

"It might help you," the Dark Lord hissed, like the sap boiling off a log, "to remember that you cannot make it to Hogwarts from this building, Malfoy. Nor will you. Ever."

The Dark Lord turned away before Draco could compose an answer, just in time to see Theodore Nott vanish on the spot and reappear, whole and unsplinched, inside his hoop. He peered around him, then gave a great whoop. "I did it! I did it!"

The Dark Lord walked away as the students broke into cheers, even some of the convicts joining in. Draco heard Mulciber call, "Well done! Well done, indeed!"

"Well," Dolohov said, looking around at his colleagues and the Dark Lord for assent, "I think that ought to be enough for tonight."

The Dark Lord, lingering now off to the side, nodded once.

The students all started to head out of the door, babbling excitedly. Crabbe, Goyle, and Theodore converged on Draco and together the boys began to make for the door as well.

"Well done," Draco was able to congratulate Theodore earnestly. He hesitated before beginning his next question, "Erm, how--"

But a hand, long-fingered and white, fell on Theodore's shoulder. All four boys stopped and whipped around.

"My lord!" Theodore gasped, quickly bending double in a bow.

Draco saw the familiar scimitar curve of the Dark Lord's lipless mouth. "I'd like a word with you, Nott. Linger here with me."

"Of course, my lord," Theodore crowed, still bent toward the floor.

"The rest of you head off." The Dark Lord reserved his fiery glare for Draco, who scurried away, Crabbe and Goyle lumbering after him. At the door, he threw an anxious glance over his shoulder at Theodore, his face shining now, split nearly in half by a wide grin, as he stood just behind the Dark Lord.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" Draco asked of his companions.

Goyle merely grunted.

Crabbe shrugged. "He looks happy."

"Yeah, but he doesn't know the Dark Lord like--"

A hand fell on Draco's shoulder too. He spun this time to see his aunt's gleaming eyes behind the wild curls of her dark hair. "Well, Draco, are you ready for your lesson?"

"Lesson? Oh." _Occlumency._ "Yes, Auntie, I'd like that."

She smiled at his use of her preferred title.

Crabbe was regarding Draco curiously.

"I'll see you guys, tomorrow."

Crabbe looked into Bellatrix's gaunt face then back at Draco. He shrugged and led Goyle toward the dark stone staircase up to the dormitories.

"Well, Draco?"

"Auntie? Can we wait just a moment? I think my friend Theodore should be out soon and I wanted to know what the Dark Lord--"

"The one who Apparated?"

"Yes, Auntie, him."

"I'm sure it can't be but good news."

"Still, I'd like to know."

"Oh, fine." She sighed and the loose ringlets of her hair blew off her forehead. "I was going to send you ahead of me and wait to get the Dark Lord's permission anyway. He was talking to your friend when I was headed toward him and it seemed... _imprudent_ to interrupt."

_A wise thought_, Draco agreed silently, a little impressed by this good judgment of his aunt's; he wouldn't have expected it of her.

To Draco's relief, Theodore came skipping out of the hall only a few minutes later, his freckled face still a beacon. On spotting Draco, he hurried over. "Oh Draco! You'll never guess! The Dark Lord wants to induct me. Tomorrow! He thinks I'm ready. I'm to meet him during the afternoon classes for some sort of test and by dinnertime, I'll be a real Death Eater!" Theodore threw out his chest. "Oh! I wonder how long it'll take an owl to get to my dad?"

"A good while, I'd expect." Draco couldn't be nearly as excited for Theodore as he was sure Theodore was expecting him to be. He bit his lip. His aunt fortunately spotted the Dark Lord leaving the hall at that moment and hurried over to him. "Listen," Draco said lowering his voice to a whisper and turning away from his aunt and master, "are you sure about this?"

"What's not to be sure of?"

Draco didn't feel at all safe answering and so quickly shifted the conversation. "This test, Theodore, did the Dark Lord mention-- did he say what _kind_ of test?"

Theodore shrugged. "I don't know, probably the stuff we've spent these last few months learning, right? The curses and skills it takes to be a Death Eater."

"And what-- what happens if you fail?"

"You think I'll fail?"

"No!" Draco quickly covered as his friends smile slipped to a frown and his face dimmed. "I only want to know _if_. I mean--"

"Draco!" It was his aunt. Draco turned to see her coming toward them again. The Dark Lord stood where he had left her, watching the two boys with glowing eyes. "Come on. The Dark Lord says we have an hour and half. Goodnight, Nott."

Theodore looked quite shocked, but pleased by this unexpected politeness from the convict.

"Goodnight, Mrs. Lestrange."

"I'll see you in the morning, Theodore." Draco was going to add, _Think about what I said_, but thought better of it. Theodore was smiling again.

"See you, Draco."

Bellatrix put her long-, grimy-nailed hand on Draco's shoulder and began to steer him off toward his dungeon room, as Theodore ascended the stairs in a daze of happiness, and the Dark Lord stood in the entrance hall watching them all depart. As they gained the dark, narrow stairwell, Draco saw the Dark Lord slash his wand downward through the air and heard the great rush of wind as the Anti-Disapparition spells settled again throughout the whole of Durmstrang Institute.

_A/N: Okay, so I'd like to say that I love this chapter for its opening look onto Draco's childhood, and am glad to report that it appears the plot-- and Draco-- are progressing, something both seemed loath to do for a while there, but I believe all is fixed and back on schedule. I feel I must, though, apologize for the scene of the Apparition lesson, which I realize echoes the one from HBP quite a bit. I hope you will forgive me that. And I hope, hope, hope, hope, hope that you will leave me a review. Please! I have been rewriting this story, as you know by now, and have yet, though this is the 12th chapter, to receive a SINGLE review on the rewrite. Won't SOMEONE tell me what they think? Please?_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	13. Twice Denied

_A/N: I'd first like to specifically thank frozentears10 for her review-- my first review on this story since I rewrote it! YAY!! You really do have no idea what that did to lift my spirits. :D Also, in hopes of avoiding another knockoff canon scene, I have opted to not include Draco's Occlumency lesson with his auntie. I hope you shall forgive me for that and allow him to tell you how it went. Cheers!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

A faint knock on the door lifted Bellatrix's curse. Draco's head was spinning as the his own memories became afterimages against his eyes, fading slowly away to reveal his dungeon bedroom with its flickering flames and ebony furniture. He looked up from his knees, where he had collapsed. He had never before appreciated the Dark Lord's true expertise. His Aunt Bellatrix threw her full power behind the curse, her spell like an iron fist ramming through his skull to snatch thoughts at random. The Dark Lord didn't have to, Draco thought as he pushed himself upright again off the ice-cold stones of the floor, lingering bent to catch his breath, hoping the aches in his knees, the pounding in his head, only increased by his aunt's inexpert Legilimency, would ease. The Dark Lord knew how much force was needed to extract the memories he wished to see and could narrow his search so that his spell was a hand drifting like smoke into Draco's mind and pulling a thought from it the way Argus Filch withdrew a card from one of his great filing cabinets, a gentle pluck with two fingers.

Bellatrix was at the door now and Draco straightened as she pulled it open onto the white, skull-like face of the Dark Lord. Draco thought, with a budding smile, that he had never been so glad to see him, though his mouth was a thin line and his eyes were oddly remote.

Bellatrix dropped into a low bow. "My lord."

The Dark Lord didn't even glance at her. His red eyes flew over her head to pin Draco, who lowered his gaze from the iciness he found there, like an empty grate, a void. Draco shuddered. "Leave, Bella," he said simply.

Bellatrix bolted upright. "Of course, my lord, of course. Goodnight, Draco. We shall meet again for another lesson soon."

Draco's training in etiquette bade him respond with, "Goodnight, Auntie."

She smiled at him over her shoulder as she flounced off into the dark corridor, soon lost beyond the dim, bluish light of the flames Draco kept.

The Dark Lord still did not move from the doorway, did nothing but stare at Draco.

Draco found he could not look at him, but as soon as his aunt had disappeared, he turned his eyes instead to the floor at the Dark Lord's feet, just where the hem of his robe brushed the stone. "Will you come in, my lord?" It was the first time they had been alone since the Dark Lord had given him his forty lashes. He _had_ to make a good impression. There had to be a way to save himself from that abyss he could see in the Dark Lord's empty eyes, the black slits of his pupils.

The Dark Lord stared at him several moments longer-- Draco could feel it as a prickling at the back of his neck-- then he reached into his pocket. For one dreadful minute, Draco thought he was going for his wand. He tensed, shrank back, but when the Dark Lord opened his long fingers, only a small bottle of some greenish liquid lay on his white palm. "Your dittany," he said.

"Oh!" The discomfort of the scarring skin seemed little compared to the head- and body aches he was currently experiencing, but Draco still wouldn't mind the red scabs disappearing from his hands and face. He took a few steps forward, reached out. "Thank you, my lord."

The Dark Lord's pale fingers closed back around the bottle. "You did not ask me. Why not?"

Draco stopped, his hand falling limply back to his side. "Erm..."

"You asked the house-elves. You did not ask me. Why not?" the Dark Lord repeated, his voice climbing, growing more sonorous.

Draco spoke to the Dark Lord's hem. "My lord, I thought you would not want me to have it, since it was your punishment that--"

"You're right, of course. But I like less that you tried to go around me."

"I only thought--"

"I'm not sure you did." His voice was sharp as the edge of a glass shard.

Draco chanced a quick glance up. The Dark Lord's eyes were live coals again, burning, roiling with flame. His knuckles on the bottle were whiter than bone.

"I'm sorry, my lord," Draco whispered to the robe's hem.

The Dark Lord hissed like an angry cat, whose tail has been trod on.

"My lord," Draco tried, "may I have the dittany?"

There was a moment's pause. "No, Draco. I think not. As you rightly say, you are being punished." He withdrew his hand and the bottle fell back into his pocket. The hand came back empty.

"Of course, my lord." Draco had not really expected anything else.

A moment's silent consideration followed, while the Dark Lord's eyes were fixed on Draco's bowed head.

"I'm displeased, Draco."

"I know, my lord," Draco assured him.

"You have looked for easier paths rather than comply with my will, my judgment. Am I to take that as a portend of your future service?" His every word was like a cut from that shard and Draco winced beneath them. "Am I to expect you to look for other roads then as well? And you have depended upon another than me. My servants should rely on no one and nothing but me."

Draco did not dare speak, but pressed his drying lips tight. He held rigid, his hands fisted at his sides. He stared at the hem of the Dark Lord's robe.

"What ought I to do then, Draco, with a sheep that has strayed?"

"Bring it back?"

"And if it refuses to come back? If I have exhausted my every energy in trying, my every wile?"

Draco's tongue slipped from between his lips, ran across them, but did little to moisten them. The words seemed to scrape their way to his mouth, "I don't know, my lord."

"Perhaps another analogy. A flower becomes a weed, does it not, when it reseeds outside of its allotted bed?"

"I suppose so," Draco muttered, peering back into the Dark Lord's white face. He wanted a warning. He wanted to know when the wand was drawn, when the curse fired.

Though his tone was light, his eyes still whirled with firestorms. "And what does one do with a weed?"

"I don't know," Draco said again. "Pulls it out, I suppose." He could feel a tremor beginning in his fingers, creeping up his arms.

"Right," the Dark Lord said, with his mouth turning to a scimitar, razor-edged and gleaming. "The weed is pulled from the roots, destroyed so that it cannot come back-- or leave any trace of itself in the earth."

Draco couldn't stand it. He shut his eyes. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. Any moment now. But he did not hear the rush of wind, nor see the flash of light. He heard the soft click of a lock.

He cracked an eye. The Dark Lord had gone behind the shut door. Draco, taking a few unsteady steps forward, reached out with a flat palm. The wood was warm with enchantment, too hot to touch. Draco was trapped inside, locked as in a crate or, more nearly Draco thought with a frown, a gladiator's cell. When he would be dragged out and asked to fight, he could not know. He only knew he would have to face the Dark Lord soon. His wand, as his hand reached into his pocket to clasp the handle, seemed little more than a stick of wood.

--

Draco slept with his fist clenched about the wand handle that night. The tightness of his grip was painful even as he lay there beneath the heavy blankets of his bed, propped up, folded back to leave a little opening. He didn't want to burrow beneath them tonight (uncomfortable as it was, he often slept that way to hide from the bright bluish-white light of the dancing flames); he wanted to be able to see the doorway, as much as he doubted that the Dark Lord would try to kill him in his sleep. He thought the duel would come when he was ready, when he could be a worthy opponent. The Dark Lord would want it that way. He would think it weak to kill anyone without a defense. Draco thought. But he remembered Potter too. Harry Potter, attacked by the Dark Lord when he hadn't been much more than a year old. What defense had Potter had? Only his parents. And as powerful as they had proved, Draco still doubted that the Dark Lord, even now, could think them to be much. Oh yes, he might very much remember how well a defenseless boy could defend himself and attack Draco in his sleep.

Draco didn't want to be defenseless if an attack came. And since he didn't have his parents to protect him as Potter had, he had to be ready. So he slept with his wand in his hand and his eye on the door. He kept that eye propped open as long as he could and then sank into a mud-like darkness, slow and sluggish and thick.

The first thing Draco heard was the waves, exhale, inhale, a great boom and then the softer grumbles of reproach, the coaxing whispers of the sea drawing the water back into its deeps. Salt was in the air, tickling his nose as he breathed in time with the crashes.

Next he became aware of the annoying, insistent prods on his arm. He reached a blind hand across his chest to swat at the offender. He wanted to hear the waves, he wanted to sleep. He struck whatever it was that was poking him. It withdrew with a little squeal and then a offended cry of, "Master Draco!"

Draco groaned and rolled over onto his side. He cracked an eye and at first saw nothing but the blackness, not as thick as it had been, with more blue, more grey. Then he saw the two pinpricks of silver shining out on green pupils. But he was probably just dreaming. It was a good dream, though. He'd play along. "Dobby?"

"It is Dobby, sir!" the elf whispered back. The darkness was retreating some more, Draco's eyes adjusting so that the light of the slivered moon seemed brighter. He could see the elf's broad grin, the moonlight glinting off his many teeth. His dreams were rarely this vivid.

"Dobby," Draco smiled back. He pushed himself upright off the mattress. The 400-count cotton sheet and lightweight emerald satin-covered quilt fell away in a glitter of silver embroidery. Draco reached up to push his hair out of his eyes with a hand that was smaller than Draco had outside the dream, and better kept, the nails gleaming, each exactly the same length, longer than most boys could keep them, but not long enough to be effeminate. Draco had insisted on not letting them grow to that length. "I thought Father said he dismissed you?" he asked. "What are you doing here? Did you decide to come back?"

Dobby shook his head so firmly that his bat-like ears flapped against it. "Oh no, Draco, sir. Dobby is liking freedom very much, sir. And Dobby got a sock and now Dobby is freed!"

"So what are you doing here?" Draco repeated, his face falling slightly. He had thought for a moment Dobby had come to beg to be allowed to stay on. With him.

"Dobby is coming to say goodbye, Master Draco, sir." Dobby's bat-like ears and smile drooped, though he kept his wide eyes on Draco, begging eyes. Draco had seen that same expression in Dobby's eyes before. Almost constantly. It was the expression that begged not to be punished.

"Goodbye," Draco repeated softly. He drew his knees up toward his chin beneath the blankets. Draco thought his legs looked shorter too, but let his pointed chin rest on top, staring owlishly at Dobby as he wrapped arms in black cotton pajama sleeves around his calves; silver glinted among the green-threaded snakes at his wrists. "You're going to leave me here, Dob? I didn't want to believe it. I didn't think you would really." They were words calculated to hurt and Draco used them remorselessly. He wanted Dobby to stay. If he had to guilt him into it that was Dobby's fault for wanting to leave in the first place.

Dobby's smile and ears slipped further. "Oh Master Draco."

Draco frowned. His voice grew firmer beneath the howl of anger and fear and sadness that was pumping up his throat, clawing to be let out. "You can't, Dobby! You can't!"

It was a direct command. Draco had meant it as such. So when Dobby shook his head, he was astonished. "Dobby must, sir. Dobby is a freed elf. Dobby got a sock. Dobby can't come back to work. His master has presented him with clothes. That's house-elf law. And Dobby-- Dobby doesn't like-- doesn't want--" Dobby's head leaned dangerously toward the ebony bedpost and he bit his lips shut.

"Don't go banging your head," Draco snapped. "You'll wake everyone." Draco's eyes narrowed as the elf breathed a soft sigh. "You're not," Draco continued quietly, steadily. "You're not a freed elf. Father would never let you go. He'd never let anything of his go." But if Dobby didn't have to follow Draco's orders, so was he truly?

Dobby looked toward the floor and shuffled his feet. Draco noticed that indeed one of them was swathed in an overlarge, knobby, black sock. "No, sir. Harry Potter-- Harry Potter is tricking Master into giving Dobby a sock. Dobby is helping Harry Potter and Harry Potter is wanting to help Dobby back."

"Potter?" The name came out in a snarl. Draco wasn't surprised that Dobby took a few nervous steps backward, green eyes wide.

"Yes, sir. Harry Potter, sir."

"You helped Potter? When?" Draco demanded. "How?"

Dobby's long fingers wrung the fraying edge of the pillowcase he still wore like a tunic. He seemed suddenly fascinated by the tattered fabric. "Over-- over the summer, Master Draco, sir. And at Hogwarts. Dobby is going to warn Harry Potter. About the Chamber of Secrets, sir. He is trying to keep Harry Potter safe. Dobby would have told Master Draco, sir, but Dobby thought you might forbid him to go, sir, and Dobby couldn't let you. Dobby had to go."

"You're right," Draco growled. "I would have forbidden you. Helping Potter. Ha! Was that your Bludger then?"

Dobby nodded nervously.

"Ha! Well, at least you broke his arm, the nosy git."

"Now, Master Draco--"

"Don't scold me Dobby. You've left me, haven't you? What gives you the right anymore?"

"I came back," Dobby said quietly.

"To say goodbye," Draco shot. "Or to tell me you're as much Potter's fan as Dumbledore is."

"Dobby likes Albus Dumbledore. And he likes Harry Potter too."

Draco scoffed again and turned his gaze away. He kept the black velvet curtains pulled back in the summer and he could see straight out the doors onto the small balcony and behind the thick stone supports to the sea beyond, twinkling tonight in the light of the low-hanging moon, as if someone had paved a road with diamonds as they tried to walk out to meet the moon where she sank below the horizon. Maybe a lover's meeting, Draco thought. Maybe just the arrival of a new servant. Draco wondered if he could follow that path.

"You won't tell Master, will you, Master Draco?"

Draco peered back at the elf. His eyes were wide and pleading again in the moonlight, his long fingers knit together. "No," Draco sighed. "No, Dobby. I couldn't. I know what he'd do."

The elf bowed low, his narrow, string bean nose almost brushing his be-socked toes. "Thank you, Master Draco. Thank you."

A frown pressed at Draco's mouth. "For heaven's sake, Dobby," he sighed, "stand up. You don't have to grovel like that for me. You know that."

"Of course, Master Draco," Dobby beamed, straightening. "But Dobby doesn't mind for you."

"Well, I do."

"Of course, Master Draco."

Several silent seconds passed with Dobby grinning, eyes and teeth gleaming, and Draco staring sullenly at him across his knees.

"So, I guess this is goodbye?" Draco said awkwardly.

"Dobby is afraid so, sir."

"Can't you-- I don't know-- spend the night or something? For old time's sake?"

Dobby shook his head with a sad smile. "No, Master Draco. Master Draco knows if Dobby were found--"

"--We'd both be dead," Draco finished. "Yeah. I know. Will I ever see you again?"

"Dobby hopes so, sir. Dobby plans so," he said more firmly, a gleam coming into his great, orb-like eyes.

"Plans so?"

Dobby nodded and reached into the pocket he had sown onto his grubby pillowcase. His long fingers unfurled to reveal a small, black stone, smooth as if the waves had washed it ashore. "Dobby got you this, sir."

Draco let Dobby tip the stone onto his outstretched palm. It did not seem to be anything extraordinary, for all his looking. "What is it?"

"If Master Draco ever really needs his Dobby, it will bring Dobby to him. He is needing only to squeeze it and think of Dobby."

Draco's fingers closed over the stone. He lifted his eyes to meet the elf's. "Thanks, Dobby."

Dobby smiled his toothy grin but there was something not quite genuine about it, as if he were forcing it for Draco's sake. "Dobby must go now, sir."

Draco nodded silently. His hand was still clenched on the stone. "If you must." What he meant, what he added in his head was, _If this stone really does work_.

Dobby raised his hand brought his long fingers together.

"Dobby! Wait!"

The elf faltered as Draco pushed back the covers and, with a set face, crossed on bare feet to his armoire, the stone still in his fist. He pulled open the door and reached into one of the drawers. When he turned, there was a dark sock in his hand, perhaps not black, the moonlight made it hard to tell, but it wouldn't look atrocious with the one Dobby already wore. "Here," Draco said, holding it out toward the elf. "You take this."

Dobby's eyes grew wide as he shuffled toward Draco and he reached up with long fingers to pluck the sock from Draco's outstretched hand.

"You'll look silly just wearing one," Draco reasoned. The backs of his eyes were beginning to sting, but he pushed back the impulse as he had always been trained, kept it as a boiling below his skin, didn't let the water rise into his eyes. "And your foot will get cold. And," Draco faltered, "this way you can't go off and forget me."

Dobby looked up from the sock to meet Draco's eyes; his green eyes were wet and gleaming. "Dobby won't forget you, sir. How could he?"

Draco tried to smile, but it seemed to wobble on his face. He turned his back instead, looking at the dark shadows inside his wardrobe. Dobby had rescued him from that armoire often, had shown him the secret passage behind it to the floors below. "You ought to go, Dobby. Before someone finds you."

Dobby scurried round to Draco's side and his thin arms wrapped themselves around Draco's middle. Draco thought the elf might be trembling. "Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome."

"Goodbye, Master Draco. Dobby will remember you."

"Goodbye, Dobby."

The elf's arms released him and there was a sharp crack, like a whip. Alone, Draco shut his eyes, let the boiling water roil a bit and then rubbed it fiercely away before anything could fall beyond his lower lashes. The waves were still crashing outside, still breathing, in... and out..., and Draco tried to again match his breathing to its.

_A/N: I almost feel as if there ought to be a bit more to this chapter, but how do you add anything onto that scene? Besides, it's a little over 7 pages already. We'll catch back up with Draco in the morning, I think, and let him enjoy or wallow in that memory for a while. Now, please review. I'd be ever so curious for your comments, complaints, whatever. I just really would like to hear a voice, any voice. Rock the story? Cheers!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	14. Trial and Error

Draco opened his eyes onto the blackness of the drawn-up blankets and quilt and a leadenness as grey as the faint light that filtered through the knit wool and down. He must have pulled the blankets above his head in the night. He groaned as he pushed them away from his face, exposed his eyes to the blue-white brightness of the eternal flames, the icy air that filled his dungeon room.

If he kept his eyes shut, he could hear the susurration and thunder of the sea, constant as a clock's tick; he could smell the salt in the air, tipping his tongue, tickling his nose. But when he opened his eyes, it was the blank stone walls of the prison, no windows, and the guttering flames. With his eyes open, he knew the leadenness of his body was the weight of a dead man's limbs, pulling him back toward the bed, stiffening his joints, and aching in muscles that refused to be used.

He pushed himself off the bed and winced when the skin of his healing welts stretched. He stumbled over to his trunk and began to dress. Layering was his only hope of heating his bones enough to make them function. And he would need them to function. At least a while longer.

His wand had fallen from his hand in the night to the floor, where it lay like any piece of kindling brought inside to feed the flames. Draco fumbled it with stiff fingers, too cold, too long kept curled last night. He pocketed it to look at those fingers, wondering what good they'd do him, really. They, like the wand, seemed more or less useless appendages in view of what he must face: the Dark Lord and his own godlike vengeance, warranted and wholly inescapable. Draco knew from books what Muggles muttered to one another about divine justice.

As he straightened from tying the laces of his fur-lined boots, his eyes lingered on the smooth, black sea stone that sat atop Grindelwald's marked bookcase. _If Master Draco ever really needs his Dobby, it will bring Dobby to him. He is needing only to squeeze it and think of Dobby._ That's what Dobby had said all those years ago. But could it really--

Draco sighed and left through the open door.

Going up the dusty stairs, with their close, frosted walls, he kept his head bent, watching his black boots climb of their own volition.

It was not until he reached the Great Hall that he had any need to pull his mind back into himself, to drag it out of the dark, dripping sea cavern it had crouched in all that grey morning.

He was unsurprised to find the Hall lit by the dim, diffuse light of a cloud-covered sky as his eyes roved over the heads of the students, carefully avoiding the High Table, where he sensed the fiery glare like the prickle of a razor-blade against his nape.

Theodore Nott turned away from the table to smile at him, a broad smile that lit his freckled face like stage-lighting; his moss green eyes gave him away, pools of worry in the otherwise sunny face. Draco trudged toward him.

"Morning, Draco," Theodore said when Draco slipped onto the seat beside him. "Lovely day."

Draco looked toward the three square windows at the front of the room, above the heads of the Death Eaters. Every one was splattered with teardrops of snow and beyond the sky was the same leaden grey that Draco felt in the corners of his mind, in his extremities-- numb toes and stiff fingers in dragonhide. Theodore's comment did not seem worth a negative reply.

Theodore's green eyes were still on Draco's face. "Do you remember why?"

Draco tugged his gaze away from the windows, the ridge of mountaintop horizon that was so eerie for its wrong peaks and too sharp points, and looked up into Theodore's freckle-spotted face. Draco saw again the worry in Theodore's eyes, the hopefulness of his smile. Draco's gaze went to the High Table, slid along the row toward the center, where Bellatrix Lestrange leaned forward toward--

Draco swung his eyes away, fixed them back on Theodore. "You're taking your test today," Draco recalled.

Theodore nodded, seemed to hesitate as he watched Draco's face for any sign of an expression. Draco reached for the basket of biscuits.

"Do you have any advice for me?" Theodore wanted to know.

Draco snorted weakly. "You've seen me in class, Theodore," he said quietly. "You've seen the way the Dark Lord looks at me." Draco had to fight the impulse to turn and check for that furious expression himself, held stiff to hide the shudder that crept through him. "You're better at this than me," he admitted.

"But you're Draco Malfoy."

"So?"

"Hasn't your father dropped you any hints over the years?"

Draco swallowed a bite of biscuit that had turned to chalk in his mouth. "If he has," he told Theodore quietly, "it didn't take." He followed the bread with a few gulps of water from the glass cup. "Didn't your father ever tell you anything?"

Theodore gave a wistful smile. "Nothing particularly useful," he said, "for this. Just the general."

Draco tore at the biscuit more hesitantly with his fingers. "Did you write him?"

"I wanted to," Theodore admitted. "I will tonight when I know. One way or another."

Draco nodded.

---

Theodore did not concentrate on the morning's classes. Draco sat beside him, shoving Crabbe or Goyle aside when necessary, and heard him muttering curses under his breath, practicing wrist movements beneath tables. When classes let out, Draco grabbed Theodore's wrist and pulled him from the classroom, putting space between them and Crabbe and Goyle. He fed Theodore little bits of what the Dark Lord had been doing to him.

"You know I didn't try to fly out of here," Draco said, with his gaze on the flagged floor, his own booted feet. "He thinks I'm not doing well enough," he muttered, struggling to be vague, knowing he was playing with a knife just letting go these few sentences. "He made a whip of his wand and he struck me here, here." He thrust out both balled fists, where the lines of the whip's lash was still an ugly red across both's backs, quickly pulled them out of sight. He pointed to the back of his neck, his back, his arms, touched the bridge of his nose and winced.

Theodore's eyes grew wide.

"He's not a forgiving man, Theodore."

Theodore glanced at the lines across Draco's hands. "So I won't mess up."

"People make mistakes."

"And he has a right to be angry with us if we do."

"But we're human! Even he makes mis--"

Theodore cut him off, "_Don't_ say that, Draco. Are you mad? What do you think he'll do to you if he hears?"

Draco crossed his arms across his chest, bent his head again toward the floor, watching their feet across the flagged stones. Their steps were out of sync.

---

Draco ran a fork idly through his tasteless food during lunch. Beside him, Theodore had already bolted his down, now sat with one hand hidden beneath his thigh, his right balled and trembling on his wand. His eyes were only for the high table, where the Dark Lord sat, still engaged in a leisurely meal. Theodore's foot jiggled beneath the table; with Crabbe and Goyle sitting across from them, Draco thought he felt the rickety bench shiver with its energy. He didn't have the heart to tell Theodore to cut it out.

What was Theodore walking into? Draco could only guess.

When the Dark Lord stood, Theodore leapt to his feet and his knee hit the table. He stood grimacing on it, not daring to massage the pain away, as the Dark Lord's eyes swept toward him, slid from him to Draco, who lowered his head over his plate, feeling the pinprick sparks all along his side.

"Wish me luck," Theodore said as Draco, glancing up, saw the Dark Lord drift along behind the table toward the stairs.

Draco's throat was dry, plugged with last-minute warnings. "Good luck."

"Ready?" The high voice sent a shiver along Draco's spine and he tried to bury himself in the uneaten dish.

"My lord," came Theodore's response and Draco was sure he had dropped into a bow, but couldn't turn to look.

"Then come."

There was a soft whisper of light robes, the heavier swish of Theodore's woolen cloak and the two were gone.

Draco looked up and toward the squat doorway into the entrance hall. They were no where in sight.

"He's so brilliant."

Draco looked back toward the sigh to see Cat Yaxley staring with glazed eyes after the disappeared pair, her long face in her hands. "Who? The Dark Lord?"

"Theodore Nott, you dolt!"

Draco frowned and turned away from her.

---

All through afternoon classes Draco was distracted by imagined flashes of what Theodore might be doing for the Dark Lord even now: skittering spiders; on their backs, legs curled in a silent screech; Theodore out in the grounds showing off his Apparition; and-- Draco's hand moved along his left forearm as he stared unseeing toward the blackboard-- a brand, white-hot, burning, snaking, scaring.

None of the Death Eaters commented on Theodore's absence, none of them moved hands toward their Dark Marks, feeling the phantom pain. None of them were haunted by the memories of their own inductions, the tortures, the murders they had performed since. They went on, explaining this curse or that poison, as if the mundane only surrounded them all.

Draco started at Crabbe's sharp rasp as Pettigrew turned his back to scribble on the chalkboard. "You all right?"

"Fine, Crabbe," Draco mumbled, settling back into the hard-backed chair.

---

Theodore was sitting at the dinner table, smiling vaguely into his stew when Draco arrived with Crabbe and Goyle in tow. Draco looked once at the Dark Lord before sidling into the seat beside him. He took a deep breath. "It went well then?" he guessed.

Theodore looked up, still grinning. "I did it, Draco," he said. "I did it." And he pulled back the left sleeve of his robe to reveal his burned-black skin, the hissing serpent-tongue in its skull.

Draco recoiled, fighting to force a lying grin onto his face. "Well done, Theodore." He kept his voice quiet, was almost certain Crabbe and Goyle couldn't hear him as they sandwiched onto the opposite bench.

Theodore nodded, ran a hand through his sandy hair as he shook his sleeve back over it. "It still hurts, though."

"I imagine it might for a bit."

"I finished two hours ago."

_And your skin's still that color?_ Draco thought, disgusted, horrified by the cruelty of it. He didn't remember his own branding, was glad he didn't.

"He let me off to rest. And I got to write home to Dad." Theodore smiled.

Draco tried to smile back and dragged the tureen of stew toward himself, took a wooden bowl from the stacks on the table. "What was it like?"

Theodore beamed even more broadly, a slow, dazed smile. "It was intense, but I must have done well. He quizzed me on everything we've been taught, like I'd guessed. He drilled me, questioned my loyalty, the sort of service he could expect--"

Draco remembered meeting the Dark Lord for the first time, in that dark office room and his icy voice drifting from the shadows of a leather armchair. _Do you serve of your own volition? What do you offer me? Show me the seal that binds us. Prove yourself mine! _ He shivered.

"And he let me perform my first act for him in his sight."

"What did he have you do?"

A grin spread across Theodore's face, an odd light coming into his green eyes. "He let me kill for him. He watched."

Draco's head snapped around and he felt his body stiffen on the bench, his fingers tighten on the spoon he'd just lifted from the table, the knuckles going white. Two days was not nearly enough time for him to forget the emerald light piercing his eyes, the sight of the spider's lifeless body, or the taste of bile, the rush of blood from his own face as he realized what he had just witnessed. He felt his color begin to drip away even now, recalling it. "Kill?" Draco asked, ashamed to hear the leap in his voice. "Who? What?"

Theodore told him lightly, shrugging, "Some Muggle rat one of the Death Eaters had caught snooping about near the pine woods. It's one less to worry about, one less to push us all into hiding."

"But--"

Theodore laughed and Draco jolted to hear it. "Don't worry, Draco. I'm sure he won't ask you till you've killed a spider. How could he?"

Draco swallowed past shallow pants. He would have Carrow's class tomorrow. He would be forced to give the Killing Curse another go. And what if he managed it? If that dreadful wind did come down to steal away the spider's life? Already he could picture the Muggle's eyes trembling in their sockets, a bright blue, wide, and youthful. Draco's spoon clattered into the bowl and he could only be glad for once that it was made of wood; the sound didn't carry.

"You all right, Draco?" Theodore asked. It was the most human his voice had sounded since the beginning of dinner.

"No," came Draco's hollow reply. He pushed the bowl away, scrambled off the bench. "I have to go," he declared, keeping his eyes fixed on the flagged floor.

"All right but--"

Draco had already turned and was marching toward the door.

---

The following afternoon, Draco pointed a shaking wand at the spider eyeing him from the desk. _I won't cast it_, Draco thought. _I won't cast it. I don't want to. And if I don't want to--_

_Ah_, said a voice from somewhere deep inside Draco. It was high-pitched, like a finger run along an icy iron banister. It made his hairs stand on end, sent a shiver along his spine. _But if you don't cast it, what will you ever amount to? Will you remain here forever? Locked in training?_

_I don't want to train. _Draco's voice was quiet inside him. _I don't want--_

_You don't? Liar! You want this. You want this more than anything else. It's all you've ever wanted._

"_Avada-- Avada Kedavra. Avada Kedavra._" The wand wood grew warm beneath his fingers as he chanted to block out the icy voice, to keep Carrow from getting too suspicious as she patrolled between the desks. "_Avada Kedavra._"

Draco's vision exploded in a flash of emerald green. He shouted and grabbed hold of his wand with both hands. A wind came roaring down around him, whipped past, and eddied around the spider, which reared on its hind legs, then fell backward onto the desk as the light cleared and the wind died.

It left a dead silence in its wake. All eyes were fixed on Draco, who stood there panting, still gripping the wand two-handed, with rigid arms.

"Malfoy," Carrow's voice was soft but loud in the aftermath, impressed, gentler than it had been toward him in weeks. "Well done."

Draco stared at the lifeless body of the spider on the desk. Unmarked, with its legs bent uselessly up atop its upturned belly. He'd done it. He took a great gulp of air, turning from the desk. He felt cold with all the blood rushing from his face and wrapped his arms around himself, pressing the still warm wood of his wand against his arm to leak its heat through the wool of his turtleneck sweater. His every limb shook.

---

"I was beginning to think I'd never get to say it, Draco. You had me worried."

Draco stared at the toes of his boots, peeking out from beneath the hem of the dyed vicuna wool cloak. The firelight sent a shiver of gold along the leather, but did nothing to warm his hands in their dragonhide. He'd been wandering around numb since Carrow's class. He had numbed himself further at the sight of the oily coils of the great boa, curled like a dog on the hearth rug, and of the Dark Lord, his robes blending with the shadows and the black leather of the chair back, his gruesome, bone-white face drawing all attention to itself by contrast.

"I suppose you know what this means?"

Draco kept silent, concentrated on the creases in the leather the firelight highlighted.

"I shall make you one of mine," the Dark Lord hissed, sanguine. Draco heard the whisper of his lightweight robes as he paced nearer, knew by his shadow that he stood before the fire, in front of or behind his snake. He cast Draco into complete darkness, smothered, masked him with that long shadow. Draco shuddered and the Dark Lord chuckled, a hissing sound like a frothing cauldron. Draco watched the long, bone finger come toward him. It burned when it made contact with the underside of his chin. Draco was almost glad; glad he could still feel, that the curse had not killed that inside of him; he had been beginning to wonder. The Dark Lord lifted his head.

Draco saw himself reflected in the red baths of the Dark Lord's eyes, in the slit islands of his catlike pupils. He was in front of the snake, not behind it, and nearer Draco than Draco had guessed.

"Mine," the Dark Lord said again, softly, almost a coo. Still holding him still, captive with the one hand, he raised the other and let its index run a lazy line down the plane of Draco's face. The edges of the Dark Lord's mouth turned upward. "What do you say to that, Draco? Are you at last ready to serve me, or will I have to keep you on the end of chain?"

"I thought we decided I wasn't your bichon frisé." Draco did not feel the words rise through his throat or push out past his tongue. He had no memory of forming them, only heard them as though from a distance through his numbness.

The red eyes narrowed on a drawn-in breath, a sharp hiss, like a blade being drawn. The Dark Lord snatched his hand back. "Still?"

"I don't want--"

His voice was hard as the steel blade, as final as its point at his throat. "We've had this conversation before, Draco."

"Too often," Draco agreed, letting his gaze fall once more to his toes. This was easier.

"Why? What did I do--"

"To get saddled with me?" His father had said the same before.

The Dark Lord took a beat before contradicting him, "No. I would not have worded it like that."

"But you'd have meant it too."

The finger returned, brushed Draco's cheek. "Draco--"

"No!" Draco pulled back. The snake on the floor let out an annoyed hiss at his shout, raised its blunt head. "Get away from me! I don't want-- I can't--" Draco took a deep breath, looking at the shadows of one of the deeper corners of the room. He spoke to them, quietly. "I can't. It would kill me."

"What would?" His voice was too gentle, velvet curtains blocking the truer nature.

"Killing," Draco choked.

"So, don't kill." The Dark Lord took another soft step toward him. Draco stiffened, but didn't back away. He waited. "You don't have to kill, Draco," he said. "I can arrange that easily. There are other things you can do. More useful things. I don't need another ax."

Draco heard the ticking of the watch on his wrist, the sputter and sizzle of the fire. "So what do you need?"

"I need an accomplice."

Another pause, another thirty seconds counted out. "An accomplice."

"Yes. I never intended you as an ax. Certainly one day I hope you can be sharpened to a lethal edge, but I don't plan for that day to come for a long time. If I can help it, the day it's needed will never come. I'll be here, I can be the executioner."

"I," Draco hesitated, peeking up at him from beneath a tuft of blonde bang, "don't understand."

"And I don't want you to. Till you prove yourself."

"So," Draco said, looking up at him even a little more, looking into his face. He wore an expression not unlike that Draco had seen in children's eyes in front of Quality Quidditch Supplies; covetous, Draco would have called it, almost greedy. "You'll test me. Like you did Theodore. But... I don't have to kill? Like he did?"

"Ah. No. I think I'd like to see you do it, Draco, once. After that...."

"Just once?"

"Just once."

"But in that book you gave me-- _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_-- it said that killing even once tears the soul. You would make me--"

"Ah, Draco," the Dark Lord smiled, "who am I to deal in souls? We leave that to God and the devil, don't we?"

Draco eyed him, watched his expression, the half-quirk curve of his lipless mouth. "There's something you're not telling me."

"There's much I'm not telling you. Yet. After the test."

"No. Now. I've a right to know what I'm getting into." He wrapped his arms about himself, feeling the sudden chill of fear, trepidation creep through his veins.

"You do not set the rules here, Draco. Not for me."

The steel in his tone, the sudden leap of flames in his scarlet eyes let Draco know that the price of another word would be dear to pay. He closed his lips against the trembling questions that threatened to spill from his clenched heart.

"I think," the Dark Lord said more quietly, "we shall set your test for tomorrow morning, Draco. Following breakfast, you will report here."

"My lord--"

"Not another sound, boy. Off to bed."

Draco hesitated, letting his arms fall limp by his sides. "Are you coming too?"

"To lock you in?" The Dark Lord grinned. "Yes, Draco, I shall come."

Draco shut his eyes and heard already the door close shut behind him, locking him in the dungeon room, even as he dropped into a quick bow and left the Dark Lord's office for the corridor.

_A/N: So, my friends, here seems not really the proper place for a lecture, at least not in my warm, honeyed tones. Maybe if I took on the Dark Lord's hiss, but outside of my writer state, I don't think that's possible. Alas, I'd never have trouble with any of my future children! But here is my warning to you all. Ff net has added this new feature to the writer's profile. We now have the ability to track how many people are viewing our chapters, how many times the chapters are accessed, the day the person visited, and the country they are from. Now, I don't have the names of any of you, but I _do_ know that it is only the ninth day of November and that this story alone has already been read by twelve people, who have viewed it a total of 62 times. Where _are_ my reviews?!?! Well, there you go, I've begged. Lucius would be appalled, but you've all driven me to it. Last month 69 people read this, accessing it 254 times; it was my most popular story that month, and I got not a single review. _I'm _appalled by that and I'm the writer so my distress ought to count more than Lucius'. In short, _PLEASE_ review? Thank you for listening to my selfish service announcement. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	15. Draco's Dilemma

_A/N: I'm glad to see my "review rant" worked. Thank you, ganta, kittenonabroomstick, Neighpony, JazRox, and Jay FicLover. I REALLY do appreciate the feedback. Please keep them coming! ;) And don't make me do that again!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

_Kill. Me, kill? I can't, I--_

Draco turned again at the bookcase, away from _Secrets of the Darkest Art_, away from Grindelwald's diary, to stalk back along the length of the bed. His shadow, cast by the Dark Lord's blue-white flames, wavered beside him-- or did it tremble? It was so hard to tell as he wrung his hands, still cold in their dragonhide. The thump of his fur-lined boots counted out another loop.

His mind was playing tricks on him. There was not really a pair of round, shivering, blue eyes staring at him, watching him from beside the bed's foot. They did not watch him with that fear that waited for a slashed wand, wanting and hating to get it over with. The blue eyes were not there. He did not have to face that look until tomorrow. Tomorrow when--

Good Lord. Tomorrow. Tomorrow would come so soon. Already he suspected he had let hours pass in pacing. It was surely past midnight. _Already tomorrow. Today. I have to kill today._

The blue eyes were in front of him, always in front of him, always watching. They were there even behind his lids jammed shut against them, jammed shut against the coming of the day, the locked door, the knowledge that he was completely and utterly trapped.

He kept pacing and the blue eyes watched.

What was he to do? What _could_ he do? for that icy voice was right: Did he really want to spend forever locked in training, locked into a room each night by the Dark Lord, living beneath his fiery glare? He couldn't do that-- anymore than he could kill that Muggle.

The expression in the eyes was so pitiable. He almost could have imagined the tiny whimper he heard came from a mouth beneath them. They were hovering at just the right spot. He knew how the Muggle would be-- crouched on the floor, with his knees drawn up, holding them tight, too scared to let even a toe near Draco as he stood over him with a raised wand, ready to--

God! couldn't they just leave him alone? He didn't_ want_ to be doing this. Didn't they understand that? He didn't want to kill.

It was a second whimper that sent him over the edge.

"Just shove it already! I'm sorry, all right?"

Draco's eyes flew open onto the flickering blue of the flames. He scanned the room, his breathing ragged. He couldn't see the eyes anymore. He slammed his eyes shut, just to make sure they hadn't taken refuge on the underside of his lids. They were not there in the darkness either.

His breathing started to slow and he found himself facing the ebony bookcase. It was so solid, not like those eyes. It was real. Draco found himself crossing the room to it. He put his hands flat on it, feeling the hardness of the wood on his skin. _Only what's real can hurt me,_ he reminded himself. _Those eyes aren't real. But the Dark Lord is._ How would he be punished this time?

The wood was not quite smooth beneath his hands. The tip of his forefinger had fallen into a gouge in the wood and, looking, he saw the symbol carved in the case's side, the dissected triangle with the circle inside-- Grindelwald's mark. Draco traced it with his finger and the Dark Lord's voice drifted through those lines. '_Gellert Grindelwald is now firmly shut away in his own prison of Nurmengard. That, Draco, is how your beloved Dumbledore deals with Dark wizards. I thought you might benefit from a daily reminder of that.'_

Prison. What must that be like? Draco had heard tales of Azkaban all along, since his earliest years. _'He's in Azkaban now, poor man. Better dead.' 'They eat the happiness right out of you, leave you dead.' _Moody's low growl, his roving, magical eye and the beady, black one both fixed on Draco, pointed, staring, _'_Avada Kedavra_, Imperius, and Cruciatus-- the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban.' _ A fellow human being... not just "wizard"... Muggles too.

Draco's fists balled on the sides of the case and he leant his forehead against the shelf. He couldn't do it. Azkaban? He couldn't risk it. But what else could he do? What other option did he have? If he went back to Hogwarts, to Dumbledore-- who was as real as the Dark Lord, if more distant, a less immediate threat-- could he really expect any better greeting than his old friend had received on that German field the day he had given himself up? _He'd kill me,_ Draco quickly decided. _If he locked his friend up, he'll kill me. I've done nothing to deserve better._

Deserve. If this came down to desert.... _Then I as good as gave myself up years ago, didn't I?_ He heard his own laugh, grating to his ears now, as he watched Longbottom fall to the ground with his legs locked together, watched him wriggle like a worm on the floor. He heard again all the jabs he'd taken at Weasley. His groans and moans over the "pain" in his arm when Hagrid's hippogriff had attacked him, just to spite the gamekeeper, because he'd thought himself better than Hagrid. He remembered the flush in his cheeks at Potter's jibe at his mother, the fire in his veins. That was the first time he had felt that fire, while the Dark Lord's strength grew, while his second rise came ever closer. It had scared him. He remembered watching the jet of light that leapt from his shaking wand graze Potter's turned cheek, the bang that echoed around the hall, the pricking sensation as white fur sprouted from his shrinking, morphing limbs, Moody's shout of "OH NO YOU DON'T, LADDIE!"--

The color climbed into his face at the very thought and he was glad of it, raised his numb fingers to his cheeks in the vain hope that its heat was transferable. His stomach turned too and he turned to lean back against the case. If this came down to just desert, it was death any way he looked at it.

But someone somewhere had to believe in more? Didn't Dumbledore trust Snape? Wasn't the Death Eater still walking and talking, even teaching at Dumbledore's school? Everyone knew Snape's allegiance. Moody knew to say the least-- he had hinted at as much when he'd dragged a disheveled and embarrassed Draco down to the Slytherin Head-- and Moody hadn't struck Draco as the type to keep quiet about that sort of thing; he'd almost threatened Draco's father; he'd as good as threatened Snape that day. So Dumbledore knew Snape had ties to the Dark Lord and he hadn't hurt him-- visibly.

_Even if he had, it would be better than death. And death's all I'm likely to get from the Dark Lord's wand._

But Draco remembered too the crushing weight of enchanted armor and the fire radiating from Dumbledore as he stalked across the Great Hall of Draco's mind, wand drawn, calling, _'Professor McGonagall, alert the Ministry. Tell them that we've a Death Eater they'll want for questioning. Tell Cornelius to summon the dementors and have them brought here.'_ He remembered the wand tip between his eyes.'_Traitor. You think to return here to harm my students? Never! I cannot allow--'_ Draco wondered suddenly, could the Dark Lord have possibly planted all that in his head?

Hogwarts! He'd been trying to push it from his mind. Since his punishments had become more severe, he'd been all but succeeding; it was hard to think of much else with the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, while waiting on the Dark Lord's seven syllables to cut the string that was his life. But... the door was locked, enchanted. '_If you should try to remove them, or to undo the door in any other fashion an alarm will sound and I will be summoned here immediately and you will find my mood quite... _unpleasant.' He had no way to get to Hogwarts to be able to risk Dumbledore's wrath.

Draco sighed and fell back onto the case. The shelves' contents rattled and Draco spun to catch them. It was then his eyes fell on the stone. _'If Master Draco ever really needs his Dobby, it will bring Dobby to him. He is needing only to squeeze it and think of Dobby.'_

Need? Maybe not, but what he wouldn't give for the elf's counsel! Even just to see his face again. Even if only to say goodbye....

Draco reached up and closed his hand around the stone. He brought it off the shelf and looked at the smooth, black surface. What did he have to do?

_Dobby? Dobby, you said this would work. Please._

Draco looked up and waited, but no one came. The room was silent save for the odd whisper of the flames, Draco's slow-drawn breaths, the tick of the watch on his wrist.

_He's not coming. It was just some trick. Some silly thing to make me feel better about the change. And it worked 'cause I was thirteen and stupid._

Draco's fingers closed over the stone as his hands fell, fisted, to his sides, his head fell toward his chest, and his eyes fell shut.

It had been a last hope-- a last desperate hope! And now what was he to do? Sit here and wait for the Dark Lord? Try to sleep?

What would death feel like when it came, as it inevitably would? Draco could already see the green light building behind his shut eyelids. Would it be quick, painless? A flash of light and then--? Or would it hurt to have his soul torn from his body? Would it hurt as much if he found some way to do it himself? Killing himself, there would be no eyes to stare into, no soul to see quivering just below the flesh, no body to watch crumple--

Draco shuddered and his eyes fluttered open again on a rattling breath.

Eyes. The eyes were back. But green this time. Great, round eyes that stared at him from a dark corner.

"I told you," Draco sighed, "this isn't-- this isn't what I want. I wouldn't do it if I--"

"Wouldn't do what, Master Draco?"

The green eyes blinked and led a small, brightly bedecked body into the flickering, blue firelight.

"Dobby!"

The house-elf nodded and dropped into a low bow, so that his mountainous stack of-- were those hats?-- was in danger of falling off his head, leaned heavily against his large bat-ears. Then he looked up at Draco, peering down the length of his thin, green bean nose. "Master Draco is calling Dobby. What's wrong, Master Draco? The stone isn't letting you call Dobby unless you is really needing him."

"Oh Dobby." Draco pushed the heels of his hands against shut eyes. If only he didn't have to watch, if he couldn't see those eyes waiting for him, see the light leave them-- he'd heard that's what death looked like-- then maybe he could-- But he couldn't blot out his vision anymore than he could kill. Draco slid down the length of the bookcase, his knees folding against his body. "Dobby, I'm not a murderer."

"Dobby knows it, sir. Did Master Draco kill someone?"

"No," he moaned. "But I'll have to, Dob. I'll have to in the morning. And I can't do it. I can't. But the Dark Lord-- he'll make me do it. I have to pass the test. And if I don't-- Dobby, I'm out of chances. He _won't_ let me walk away from this."

The pressure of Dobby's hands on his, the long fingers pulling his away from his eyes, made him stir, made him meet the elf's concerned gaze. Dobby kept his hand in his, brushing its back the way he used to when Draco was ill. Draco had forgotten a touch could be warm, forgotten it could be any solace. He tried to smile.

He was about Dobby's height in this position, so that he could see himself reflected in the black mirrors of Dobby's pupils.

The lines in his face seemed sharper even than he remembered them. His wide, dark eyes were hidden in a deeper concave than Draco thought was usual, and the skin beneath drooped in dark shadows. And he'd grown thin. He hadn't noticed-- the change had been so slow-- but as he looked down now at his wrist, he knew it was narrower than it had been, that he ought to have looked larger compared to Dobby.

"I'm wasting away already," Draco breathed, stunned. He looked away from the elf, not wanting to see anymore, to even catch a glimpse of himself in those eyes.

"Why hasn't Master Draco left? Why hasn't he been eating? What's kept him awake so many nights?"

Draco hesitated. "They hate me here, Dobby. I'm not living up to their expectations. I see them. They all wear that same expression Father does, when they think I'm not looking. That peeled back lip, that wrinkled nose. And the Dark Lord-- I've been nothing but a disappointment to him since we met and he's fed up with me. He's tortured me, Dobby. Look at my hands!" Draco raised the one that hung limp at his side for the elf to see. "Look at my face! And my back's worse. And he's threatened to kill me, Dob-- so many times.

"I've tried," Draco said. "I've tried to please them. But I can't do it. I can't, Dobby. I don't think-- I don't think I was meant for this. I don't think I'm supposed to be a Death Eater."

Dobby blinked, staring at Draco. "Then what is Master Draco supposed to be being?"

"I don't know. God! I'd be anything else right now." _Even a prisoner._ "Dobby-- you know Dumbledore-- better than I do, anyway; you work for him. What's-- what would he do to me if I went back there? Would he send me to Azkaban like he says?"

Dobby's green eyes grew wide. "Who is saying Professor Dumbledore sends you to Azkaban?"

"The Dark Lord," Draco mumbled, avoiding Dobby's glare by looking down.

"Well the Dark Lord is being wrong."

"He is?" Draco sat straighter, opened his eyes wider.

"Professor Dumbledore, sir, isn't turning away Dobby or Winky-- he is paying them!" The elf threw out his sweatered chest momentarily. "Why is Professor Dumbledore turning away Master Draco?"

"You were-- it isn't the same Dobby. You hadn't done-- what I've done."

"You isn't killing."

"Not yet. But I've tortured people. I've tortured elves." Sometimes at night-- and now-- he saw the contorted face of the house-elf, Vlad, as the Veritas Curse tore secrets from his chest. Draco tried to mask a shudder.

"Professor Dumbledore is a great man," Dobby said solemnly, lowering his great eyes toward be-socked feet.

Draco found himself nodding. "Dobby?" he said quietly. "How do I get there?"

"To Professor Dumbledore?"

Draco nodded again.

"Through the door, Dobby is expecting."

"It's enchanted, Dobby. I can't do a thing to it or the Dark Lord will be here and then-- Dobby, I don't think I'm going anywhere."

Dobby shuffled over to the door and held out long fingers toward the wood. The heat of the the Dark Lord's spells didn't seem as unbearable to the elf, though. His fingertips touched the wood, where Draco's could not. "It's wizards' magic."

"Of course it is. What did you expect from him?"

"No," Dobby said, looking back at Draco with a bit of a quirk. "It's only wizards' magic that will not be working on the door."

Draco's eyes snapped wide and he scrambled to his feet. "You mean you can undo it?"

"Dobby can open it," Dobby clarified.

"Do it, Dobby."

Dobby eyed him a moment, then said, "If Dobby lets Master Draco go, Master Draco will return to Hogwarts?"

"Isn't that what I've been saying?"

"And he won't come back to this place? He won't come back to the Dark Lord?"

Draco hesitated a moment, biting his lip. "There'll be nothing for me here," he realized, speaking softly, "except death. Yes. I'll stay there."

"Away from him?"

"Yes."

"No matter what?"

Draco's eyes narrowed. "You know something I don't."

Dobby backed away from the door, but he was looking somewhere just to Draco's left. "Dobby is knowing many things Master Draco."

"Tell me."

A grimace passed over the elf's face. "Give Dobby your word, Master Draco."

"I don't like him, Dobby."

Dobby hesitated then nodded and pointed a single long finger at the door. Draco drew a breath. The spell went off with a bang that made Draco wince and shut his eyes against the sound that echoed off the cold, stone walls of the dungeon room. The blue flames, Draco saw from the changing quality of the light behind his lids, guttered.

He peeked.

The door had swung open onto the long, dark corridor.

"Quick, Master Draco," Dobby hissed. "Someone will be hearing that."

Draco tore his eyes from the miraculously open door and onto the elf. "Dobby-- how can I ever-- you marvelous--"

"Master Draco can thank Dobby when Master Draco is at Hogwarts! Now go!"

Draco flashed him a smile, then darted toward the door.

"Master Draco!"

Draco skidded to a stop and turned to see Dobby, holding out Draco's wand, his long fingers around the rod rather than the handle. "Master Draco will be needing this."

"Thanks, Dobby," Draco said, walking back to accept it from him.

"And take this." Dobby unfurled his other fist to reveal the black sea stone that had called the elf to Draco. "Just in case. Put it in your pocket. But keep your wand out and ready. And fasten your cloak so you won't get cold. And put up your hood."

Draco smiled, flipping the hood onto his head, pulling it low so that the hem was near his eyes, narrowing his field of vision. "I'll see you soon, Dobby." The words came in a whisper.

Dobby nodded. "Good luck, Master Draco," and disappeared with a _crack_.

_A/N: Ah.... How scenes expand in rewrites. This was only 3 pages before and -gasp- the first three pages of this were practically all stream-of-consciousness, weren't they? Well how on _earth_ did that happen? I don't even _read_ stream-of-consciousness. Was it hard to follow? Did it work for this fic? Also, for those who understand the reference, that last bit was supposed to come off sounding a bit like Iroh's exchange with Zuko, um, midway through "Siege of the North, part 1." "And put your hood up. Keep your ears warm." Somehow that same line (in gist) doesn't have the same effect when the boy's not going off to kill/capture someone, that's my theory. How can I make that work better? (And if you're going to respond to this point, please realize I've yet to see Avatar: Season 3.) Thanks for reading and because I probably won't get something up before then: Happy Christmas! er, Holidays! :)_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	16. Of Shadows and Moonlight, Fire and Ice

_A/N: For those returning to this fic, as some of you I know now are (squee!), I added a few lines to the end of the previous chapter; they fit better there than here. Just so you're aware. ;) For those who have been begging me to "not be mean" (or similar) and post soon, I beg your patience and forgiveness. I know cliffhangers are suspenseful and that you want to keep going, but sometimes, you have to wait for dessert. Good things don't often come right away. That how writing is for me. But enough philosophy. Chapter 16. -bows-_

_Yours forever, Tsona_

The unilluminated hallway seemed longer than it was as Draco raced along it, for once glad of its depth, because he doubted the pounding of his feet could be heard beyond this underworld to which he alone had been assigned. Special privileges from the Dark Lord.

Draco knew what to do as if he'd been planning it all along. Maybe he had been. He remembered-- it seemed ages ago, and in truth, it had been months-- sitting on the steps, calculating the distance to the forest's edge. He hadn't been bold enough then to test his guesses, to step off the edge of the stone. _Now_, he thought, his footsteps slowing as his ill-adjusted eyes sought the first flight of stairs in the dark, _I'm not bold enough to stay._

What would his father think when he found out Draco had fled? What would he do? Draco shivered to hear the sneer in his father's voice, as clear as if he stood beside him in the arctic tunnel, _Cowardice. Weakness. Qualities unbefitting a wizard. No, my lord, do what you must to the boy. He's yours. Contact Severus. He will no doubt be able to find some way to--_ Draco tried to swallow past the fear that had sunk claws into his throat, that blocked air, made his breathing shallow, ragged.

_Qualities unbefitting a wizard...._ He lit his wand and raised it high, away from his eyes, to find the stairs. After the Stygian darkness, the bright light was a blazing star and blinding. It was not the first time Draco wondered why no one had ever invented a spell to dim a wand's light.

Draco mounted the stairs, keeping his wand on his feet now, holding his free hand out to the frozen stones of the close wall, feeling the rough scrape of them even through his glove. He ran as fast as he dared. One step, five, a flight....

What would the Dark Lord do when he found out? Would he track him? Could he break into Hogwarts? But if Dumbledore _did_ send him to Azkaban-- he'd broken into the prison before.....

_No_, Draco told himself firmly. _Dobby said I'd be fine. He said Dumbledore wouldn't--_

_But Dobby's a house-elf and Dumbledore's his master. If Dumbledore says--_

Draco tightened his grip on his wand and turned his face toward the ceiling, toward the closed door at the end of this last flight of four, seeking the drafts, the light that might seep through the cracks around its edges.

Upon the first glimmer, Draco muttered the counter-spell to put out his light and edged up the last few steps by the dim blue shafts of moonlight making shadowy thorns grow out of the rough stones of the walls. Draco wondered fleetingly if this was what the hedges of the third task had looked like to the champions-- to Potter. But at the end of that-- He remembered seeing Potter lying flat on the ground, his leg torn to shreds by the Acromantula, his face pale and the scar vivid, one hand closed tight on the Triwizard Cup's handle and the other on Diggory's dead wrist as he looked into Dumbledore's worried face. He remembered Diggory's wide staring eyes, like milky frog's eggs. _"He's back. Voldemort."_ The slits of blue moonlight made the clouds of Draco's ragged breath shimmer. He stretched out his hands and put them against the wood, cold beneath his fingers. He pushed.

The moonlight was as blinding as spellwork, as _Avada Kedavra_.

Draco stood on the threshold, blinking, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

Slowly the entrance hall came into focus, darkened, the shadows gathering in the corners, the beams of moonlight narrowing, shrinking, leaving most of the hall in darkness once more, still enveloped.

Draco slunk out into the semidarkness, pushed the door shut behind him. _No point in leaving evidence behind... keep the Dark Lord off my trail for as long as possible._ The small, square windows were set above the main door and it was toward these Draco set his course, but now slower, not daring to run lest someone hear the slap of his boots on the stone.

"Who's there?" The words echoed around the empty hall and Draco froze, not even daring to look for the speaker. He sounded young. Some boy out of bed for the loo?

"I'm armed," came the voice. It was coming from some way above him, to his right. Draco tried to blend in with the walls.

"Speak!" it said.

After still no response, this time it shook, just a little, "If you're a Death Eater...."

"If I weren't, I wouldn't be here, would I?"

"Draco?"

Draco turned and looked up along the open upper storeys till his gaze landed on a pale face peeking through one of the pointed arches that held up the ceiling of the second storey. "Theodore," Draco breathed.

"You scared me," Theodore admitted. "I didn't know--"

"It's just me," Draco assured him quickly. "Go back to bed, Theodore."

Theodore shook his head. "Can't. The Dark Lord has me patrolling tonight." He seemed to throw out his chest, though it was hard to tell behind the railing, from so far down.

Draco didn't know how to respond to this, and as he had feared, Theodore continued, "What are you doing out of bed?"

"Thirsty," Draco said, thinking fast.

Draco waited while Theodore scrutinized him.

"Where are you going then? The stairs are back that way," he said, pointing the way Draco had come.

There was nothing on this ground floor save the door to the dungeons that Draco had come through, the stairs to the upper storeys, the door to the outside that Draco looked to with such longing, the great hall, and a broom closet. He had no reason to go to the great hall, and certainly none to go to the broom closet, and so he looked at Theodore sadly, his stomach all in knots as he tightened his hold on his wand.

"Are you feeling all right, Draco? You look a little green.... Maybe you should go lie--"

"_Confundo_," Draco said quietly, unhappily to the wand. He watched the spell flutter on airy wings toward Theodore, whose face went slack, his eyes unfocused.

"Go to bed, Theodore," Draco said again.

"Yeah," came Theodore's slightly slurred words. "Okay. Goodnight."

Draco watched him stumble out of sight and looked down at the wand. He hadn't wanted to attack Theodore-- Theodore, his old playmate, one of his last friends here in Durmstrang. It seemed like an ill-omen....

Draco sighed and looked again toward the front doors. Leave behind Durmstrang... leave behind the Dark Lord.... He started forward again. It was now or never. There was no knowing if anyone else was patrolling tonight, nor, if anyone was, whether they would be able to recognize Theodore's symptoms as a jinx.

The pine doors looked as they had when he had come here-- was it truly only a week ago?-- with Professor Snape. He remembered the glittering world beyond, bathed in snow and moonlight. He remembered the Potions master's words: _"Take me with you?"_ Draco had asked.

"_You know I can't."_

"_I can't get out on my own."_

"_You're going to have to. I can't help you with this."_

Draco took a deep breath, put his hand on the wood. No alarms sounded, so he pushed, blinking in the blinding light of the half moon on the snow. The cold blasted past him, almost pushing him back inside the castle, but he shouldered through it till he heard the crunch of the snow beneath his boots and knew he was outside. He pushed the door shut with his shoulder, his feet slipping on the ice, but he remained upright. Snape had made this all look so easy....

Draco's eyes adjusted, allowed him to see again the diamonds hidden in the white, the black silhouette of the Durmstrang ship on the frozen lake, the pine forest at the edge of the grounds like a line of jagged teeth, a line of black-clad soldiers standing guard.

Draco breathed in the cold air again, let it lace his lungs, filter into his blood, even as he hugged his cloak tighter about himself, even as he pulled the hood up to cover his ears, to cover his revealing blonde hair. He had to keep warm. He'd promised Dobby. He had to be warm enough to move, to run. He'd promised Dobby he'd get to Hogwarts. He hadn't said goodbye. He hadn't expressed his thanks.

_If Potter hadn't freed Dobby,_ Draco thought_, I'd free him for this, if he wanted to be free. I'd give him whatever he wanted. I _will_._

The snow got progressively denser beneath his feet as he proceeded down the stairs, each step a little nearer his feet, but the icy crust thankfully held his weight. He reached the snow's highest level, hesitated on the point. It was here he had always stopped, those many months ago when he would watch the sun's first rays spread across the then-green grounds. He felt again the wall of rules and warnings pushing him back, back toward the castle, back toward the Death Eaters, back toward the Dark Lord and his waiting wand. Draco looked again back at the black turrets and leering black windows of Durmstrang Institute. Then he looked out again at the grounds, judging as he often had before the distance to the forest, measuring out his steps. He left the stoop for level ground several steps earlier than he would have usually.

The snow crunched beneath his feet like regurgitated bones on the floor of the Hogwarts Owlery. He tried not to cringe at the sound as he pressed onward across the snow, tried not to wonder if his bones would crunch the same way as mice's and frogs'. The slope out of the valley was steeper than he had expected, and his feet slipped on the ice, making the climb all the more toilsome. He bent double to battle the forces pulling him back toward the castle.

The land leveled as he approached the lake that harbored Durmstrang's ghostly ship. Draco stopped, panting, his breath escaping in great, billowing clouds, as smoke rose from a ruined potion. Was it the late hour that made him so tired? He remembered as he stood there, turning his gaze to the black sky, alight with a thousand diamond stars, the twinkle in Dobby's great eyes as Draco proclaimed his desire to return to Hogwarts. Those stars were like the floating candles in the Great Hall that made the golden plates and goblets sparkle, that shimmered in the loose hair of students sitting beneath them, laughing often, or just chatting. A smile began to spread across his face. He saw the castle's tall turrets; its glittering windows. He remembered pulling velvet curtains shut around a soft bed covered by a downy quilt. He remembered sitting with Dobby by the kitchen fire, sipping a cup of hot chocolate made by the elf's recipe. He started forward again through the snow.

He had not made it into the shadow of the hull, however, when he froze again, his head craning around at the distant shout of, "There! There I see him!"

"Well, get after him!" Draco would have known that voice, now, anywhere. He knew it by the shudder it sent down his back, by the shiver it sent through his suddenly leaden legs. The Dark Lord. He'd been found out.

A horde of unmasked Death Eaters-- the rabble who had guarded Durmstrang all along and, in front of these, the band that the Dark Lord had freed from Azkaban-- was running across the snow, the cold air carrying their shouts across the grounds to Draco's numb ears. One or two fired curses, but they were too far to reach him yet. They would be able to soon.

Draco stood frozen like that, watching the Death Eater battle the hill, when a fire broke out on his arm. It made him clutch at his forearm with a groan as it spread its long fingers through his every nerve. The Dark Lord had pressed the Dark Mark of one of his Death Eaters. He was calling the others to him. Soon they would all be here and--

Draco tore his boots from the snow, forced all his excess energy and all his will into his legs. He stumbled forward into the ship's shadow. He was tearing through bars of light and dark, never enveloped in one or the other till he tore past the ship's stern into an unbroken field of bright, white moonlight. But now the Death Eaters were close behind him. One sent a Stunning spell at him. The jet of red light passed so close to Draco's shoulder that he felt its heat like the slice of a knife. Another passed close to his ear on the other side, ruffling his hair. Their shouts seemed amplified by ten. Draco darted a quick look over his shoulder as he ran and saw that, even as this first group gained, a second, masked and with wands ready, was not far behind them.

And at the head of the second group ran the Dark Lord himself, his bone-white face a beacon among the black of those he led, his red eyes fire in a world of ice.

Draco felt his feet slowing and a wonderful warmth seeping into every part of his body as he met those eyes. His suddenly blessedly empty head drooped on his neck and he saw his own shadow, dark on the white of the snow trailing after him, tugging at his feet, imploring him to slow down further.

_Just stop running,_ he seemed to hear in his head, gentle, bewitching, cooing words. _Just stop. Why should you run? There's no reason for it. Nothing to fear._

Draco's feet slowed further. He was plodding along through the snow now.

_Just stop. Stop running._

There was laughter in his ears, wild, high laughter. A woman's, he thought.

The laughter seemed to trigger another voice, more insistent, echoing in his hollow mind. _What are you doing? Idiot. They'll kill you if you stop. Run. RUN!_

Draco's eyes grew wide as that panic infected him and he obeyed. He fled.

And stumbled. Something caught at his ankles, tripping him. He fell heavily forward, his body breaking at last through the layer of ice to the densely-packed snow beneath, falling through shards of glass into a cushion so deep it rose to ensnare his body, like the six-foot walls of a grave.

"Oh no you don't!" screeched a woman.

Draco, the warmth, the emptiness in his head gone in an instant only to be replaced by the aches of his fall, the sharp sear of his cut face and hands, wiggled onto his back, fighting the snowy arms that held him to the ground. The Death Eaters had closed around him, forming the circle he had seen, had joined in the great hall. His eyes flew from masked face to unmasked to masked, from wand to wand, some raised, some in fisted hands held at Death Eaters' sides. He thought he heard a low sob. He pushed himself upright, into a seated position, and only succeeded in cutting his hands further on the shards of ice and gaining a better view of the Dark Lord, standing not a meter from him, towering, his red eyes ablaze. Draco's shadow stretched to cling pleadingly to his ankles, even as Draco sat in the snow and stared.

"Draco. You are stubborn and rebellious. As ever."

"My lord--"

"Don't. You have flaunted my rule at every turn, Draco. What lord am I to you?"

"Sir, I--"

"No. No," the Dark Lord breathed, looking pensively toward the horizon, "perhaps I am wrong. I am still the lord," he said more firmly, swinging his red eyes back to pin Draco to the snowy ground, to lash his face again. "You are the wicked servant. The wicked servant that I, as master, must punish. Now, Draco. Not later. Not anymore."

"As I've said all along," Draco heard his father mumble from somewhere behind him, safely masked.

The Dark Lord raised his wand, steady in his hand, aimed it at Draco's heaving chest.

"Wait."

The Dark Lord shut his eyes and, for one wild moment, Draco thought he might win mercy, but then, "No. I cannot."

Draco stared, panting, his eyes beginning to sting as much as his frozen hands. He trembled. He shut his eyes. He didn't want to watch. But he could not stop his mind from flashing again the ends he'd seen for himself, from replaying the different ways he had imagined death to feel, even now: the twist and tug of his reluctant soul; the burning in his bones, intensified a thousand times beyond the magnitude of the Cruciatus' effect; the ice that rushed through him, steeling warmth from his limbs and leaving him still, dead; the sudden hardening of his blood, leaving him whiter than the snow; the--

"Still...." Draco peeked and saw that the Dark Lord had retracted his wand, was running a pensive finger along its wood as he stared at Draco. "I would have you die like the servant I would have had you be. Stand up, Draco."

Draco didn't resist, didn't hesitate. Just as he had he didn't know how many times before, just as he had when he had first arrived at Durmstrang, he stood before the Dark Lord, looking at the hem of his black robe, so contrasted against even the snow made grey by Draco's shadow. He half-expected the finger that crept toward him, that pressed, a knifepoint, against his chin, raising it till Draco's eyes met his.

"You could have been great, you know," the Dark Lord said, so quietly that Draco doubted any of the circle heard him. "You were destined for greatness, to rule by my side. You could have power beyond anyone's wildest imaginings."

Draco, looking into the Dark Lord's red eyes, though they burned, though it hurt to do so, felt something shift inside of him at the words, raise a weary head to sniff at the air, stretch its long neck and flex powerful wings like a dragon's. The power reared up inside of him, touching every point of his body with a sudden fire, dragon's fire, hot and deadly, but still running now through his veins, leaving him unharmed, exhilarated. His skin might have shone with the fire's blaze. His already shallow breathing grew heavier on the drug and the Dark Lord's thin mouth turned upward, watching his face.

"That's right," the Dark Lord cooed. "You feel it?" he whispered. "It could have been yours, Draco. It could all have been yours. And you chose this," he finished, releasing Draco with a hiss of disgust.

The wand swung upward again, but even as it did, the new power in Draco roared. It made Draco's blood boil more fiercely than it had when his father had threatened him as a child and he had grown petulant, had crossed thin arms over a thin chest and narrowed his eyes in a glare identical to his father's. He had stood that way through his shouts. He had tried to hold it as his wand came slashing through the air. But the Dark Lord wasn't punishing him with minor jinxes now, Draco realized, even as his hands clenched and he realized they were empty. He was not even going to punish him with his father's worst-- the Cruciatus-- the worst because the curse wasn't to be used on human beings; his father had told him so; Moody had told him so. Draco's boiling blood, the hammering in his ears, the thrill of power heightened his senses. His eyes flicked to the ground and he saw his wand lying in the snow behind him. He could fight, the power told him, but not like this, not unarmed.

"_Avada--_"

Draco dived sideways.

"_-- Kedavra!_"

The snow melted straight to the brown grass below, leaving a great crater where Draco had been. The Dark Lord shrieked, an unearthly sound that sent shivers through Draco's whole frame even in this heightened state, almost stopped him. But he made a lunge for his wand, grabbing it back just in time, as another jet of green burst through the snow just where it had been.

Draco straightened, panting, but pointing his rescued wand steadily back at the Dark Lord, who met his even stare now with narrowed eyes, the calculating stare of a particularly aggressive hippogriff, watching as some fool approaches it with bravado, without respect. Draco would only make that mistake once. He knew this adversary too well. He respected the Dark Lord's talents, he respected his power. He watched and waited, wand still aimed.

The Dark Lord laughed a slow, low laugh, the froth and hiss of a bubbling poison over cauldron-fire. "What are you going to do, Draco? Curse me? You wouldn't dare."

"I cursed Theodore tonight," Draco told him bravely.

A bent Death Eater just in Draco's periphery vision stiffened.

The Dark Lord laughed again. "The Confundus Charm will hardly work on me, Draco."

"I've killed before."

"Once," the Dark Lord reminded him. "And then, I think, by accident."

Draco's breathing was still heavy. His heart still hammered against his chest, clamoring for escape. The power still told him he could do it.

"You could still come back," the Dark Lord hissed, again as quiet as falling snow that makes the world white and clean. "You could still rise to power alongside me."

"And on a chain!" The words ripped from Draco's throat on a roar. He grasped the wand with both hands now. "I'm leaving! I'm going home!"

"Home?" the Dark Lord chortled. "Draco, you've no where to go."

"Dumbledore won't hurt me," he said, repeating Dobby's conviction.

"He won't protect you either." The Dark Lord lowered his voice, "You can't escape me, Draco. I'm as much a part of you as your own being. I'm so deeply entwined with your own self that--"

"SHUT UP!" The Dark Lord was repeating the whispers of Draco's worst nightmares and, from the slow, satisfied curve of his lipless mouth, he knew it. "Stay out of my head," Draco added.

"So you admit it, then? You know?"

"No. I worry. I might even suspect. But I don't know."

"And you'll trust chance?"

"I'll trust myself." Draco, hands still on the wand, began to back up. He didn't dare turn from the Dark Lord, who stood, a dark tombstone in the snow, watching him with catlike eyes. "I'll trust whoever can keep me away from you."

The Dark Lord's head tilted. He took a step forward. "Keep you away from me? Not the other way around? Is this a confession that you don't _truly_ wish to leave me?" He stretched forth one, long-fingered hand, white as the snow.

"Keep away from me!" Draco cried, scrambling backward now. A Death Eater's arms caught him, held him upright, inside the circle. The man squeezed his shoulders lightly before pushing him forward, back toward the Dark Lord.

The Dark Lord gave a twisted smile. "Ah fear," he said, still advancing slowly, a cat creeping up on a cornered mouse.

Draco flashed a quick look at the man who had caught him: long fingered hands in dragonhide, a long, masked face, and eyes like black tunnels that bore through Draco.

_Now, Draco_, he heard in his head.

"_Stupefy!_"

"_Avada Kedavra!_"

Draco took flight even as he shouted his jinx. He ducked. The Death Eater he had jinxed fell into the snow. The Dark Lord's green jet, sailing just past Draco so that he felt its heat at his back, sent the Death Eater's scattering, Goyle and Crabbe lumbering stupidly backward and sideways; Draco was surprised they didn't collide in their panic. Mr. Nott, between them and the Stunned Death Eater, flung himself to the ground; Draco hoped he wouldn't be trampled. His aunt, Bellatrix Lestrange, on the other side of the Stunned man, shrieked, and made a wild grab for Draco's arm, which he dodged by leaping Mr. Nott's back. He landed outside the circle and kept running.

"Fools!" the Dark Lord shouted. "Get him! Get the boy! Stop him!"

Draco heard the squawks of Death Eaters spurred to action as he ran, his footsteps like the crackle of flame on the snow.

The pine forest was just up ahead now, up the steepest bit of the climb. He could see its green now in the light of the moon, see the darker shadows beneath the trees' feathery arms. He didn't worry about dignity now, but willingly used his hands to claw up the mountainside as he dodged more curses, as the Death Eater's shouts clawed at his ears. One red jet exploded just where his hand had been, causing Draco to gasp and drudge up even more energy to spur his climb.

He was in the blue shadow of the pines now. They were just ahead. He had only to make it to their snow-dusted branches and then--

He burst through the feathery branches of the pines, dusty snow cascading into his hood and down his collar. He was through. He was safe. He was--

"You little devil!"

Bellatrix Lestrange burst through the pines after him, her flyaway hair mussed on the fingers of the branches. "How dare you dishonor the blood that--" She let out of a roar of frustration and bent to loose her cape, which had also caught.

Draco didn't wait for her. He turned on the spot, focusing all his determination on Hogwarts, thinking of nothing but, and was sucked up into an airless, black tube.

_A/N: I hope that was worth the wait. I'm sorry it was so long. Now I must warn that the next chapter will not be for some time as I am going on a short holiday/ choir concert tour in Venice and doubt I'll have energy at the end of the day to write anything more than the journal required for this class. So I'll see you all when I'm back in the States! Ciao!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


	17. Greener Grasses

_A/N: Sorry this one took so long. I hope it's worth it._

_Yours forever, Tsona_

_Oh, God. My head. _It felt as if a bludger were beating against the inside of his skull, beneath his shut, stinging eyes. His hands scrabbled, hoping to pressure the throb from his temple, clutched at his hair, thick and clumped, slimy beneath his fingers.

"Uhgh." He pulled his hands back in disgust and opened his eyes to see-

Mud. Mud on his fingers, mud on his drooping bangs, mud on his clothes, and mud beneath him.

But mud!

He rolled over and the pressure built in his head, made him momentarily blind with a groan. When the haze cleared, however, he saw that the world all around him was green- a brighter green than anything he could ever remember, a green almost so bright it hurt his eyes, made them sting again. After months of white snow, grey skies, and black shadows... The forest some ways ahead of him was not merely dark pines, but also deciduous trees with light green shoots at the ends of their elegant, ink paint branches. Mountains of bronze rose up behind them, still tipped with silver snow, but so far away from him that Draco couldn't care. Snow at that distance only reminded him how far he had come.

For while the landscape would have been lovely in its own right, he recognized it, had watched it sadly as it rolled into view each June, rejoiced to see it crest the hill on weekends.

To his left was the village of Hogsmeade. Its humble shops and cottages with their sharp-peaked roofs and smoke rising from a few of their chimneys and stovepipes were bathed in pale morning sunlight. Which meant-

Draco scrambled to his feet, forgetting grace, his robes and cloak tangling around his legs in his haste. His eyes grew round.

There it was! After months of longing for it- Hogwarts castle stood proud as he remembered it at the top of the cliff, its sloping grounds like velvet and the lake at the cliff's edge like deep blue satin under the brighter blue sky. Draco's eyes started to sting again despite the absence of mud and he ran a balled fist fiercely across them. Even now, even here where there was no one to see him, the effulgence of emotion seemed shamefully weak. "_Women cry_," his father would tell him, "_young children cry, but not Death Eaters."_ But he was no Death Eater- he had broken free of them... somehow- and his father was miles away, whether he was still at Durmstrang or back in England.

He let one tear slide down his cheek, dragging with it the mud that was drying to his face, just to see what it felt like. It was warm, but not pleasantly so. His stomach twisted sharply and he wiped it away before it could reach his chin, so recently chilled by the Dark Lord's long, bone finger.

"_You can't escape me, Draco. I'm as much a part of you as your own being. I'm so deeply entwined with your own self-"_

_Maybe I can't run forever,_ Draco thought. _But right now..._

Draco dug his nails into his palms, wanting to induce tears to prove he could, because Death Eaters didn't, because he doubted the Dark Lord even could, thinking that the tears might flood the Dark Lord from his system, that the hotness of them might burn him out like a fever did disease. But he hated the sensation, whether by the Dark Lord's control over him or his father's teaching. He soon opened his fists, taking away the stimulus with a sigh, dropping his eyes to muddied boots.

His wand lay in the puddle, the hawthorne wood bright against the dark, wet soil. He bent to retrieve it, tried to wipe it as clean as he could on his already dirtied robes. It remained cold in his hands. How long had he been lying here in the mud? he worried. What time was it?

His eyes roved along the line of the stonewall just behind him to where the two pillars stood, peaked by their winged boars looking ready to take flight. It had been nearly a year- a full eight months- since he had seen those boars. Last time, Draco had ridden through them in one of the dark compartments of the horseless carriages in silence, arms crossed over his chest, hunched over, sitting beside Crabbe, who was trying to make himself small to give Draco room, and across from Goyle and a squashed Theodore. _"Hey,"_ Theodore had said_, "you all right?" _

"_Yeah,"_ had been Draco's moody response.

He remembered sitting at the annual farewell feast, surrounded by melancholy, pale faces and the black drapery in honor of Cedric Diggory, who had not escaped his first encountered with the Dark Lord, who had been present at the rebirthing. He remembered Dumbledore's piercing blue eyes, Draco's stomach wiggling like frog spawn in a sudden current when they had flown toward him, pinned him during his speech. _"Remember Cedric. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, what happened to a boy who was good, kind, and brave when he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort..."_

Draco remembered. He remembered Diggory's wide, staring eyes and his father barreling through the last few rows of students and professors, tearing at them all like a nesting dragon to get to his son. He remembered Mr. Diggory's howls- they still sent a shudder through him, made him want to cringe back, away. _That's what I'm escaping_, Draco reminded himself. _All of that. I'm not Diggory and I'm not the Dark Lord either. No one's making that noise because of me..._

"_Every guest in this Hall,"_ Dumbledore had said while Draco had examined his then-elegant, put-together reflection in the back of golden spoon, trying to avoid those eyes, which already he felt were searching him out, _"will be welcomed back here."_

"_Will be welcomed back... if the time should come when you have to choose between what is right and what is easy." _

Draco wrapped himself in the muddy cloak, darting looks across the stonewall toward the castle, and walked across the new grass- pleasantly, surprisingly springy beneath his feet, not like the ice-covered snow at all- toward the muddy snake of the road and the gates. He wiped his fists across his face again, trying to rid himself of the grime of his inexpert Apparition.

They were chained shut. Draco reached out a hand to touch the padlock and felt the heat, the same heat he had felt when reaching toward the locked door of his dungeon cell in Durmstrang. He had been locked in there; he was locked out here. All that way... all that trouble... Did he dare risk a spell to open them? if even just to call someone? or would trying to break the chains be seen as an act of hostility? a black mark on his story of remorse?

_So much for being welcomed_, he thought, sliding back to the ground, folding his legs up against his chest. False words. How often had Dumbledore spewed them? How much could Draco believe?

"Malfoy? Tha' you?"

Draco sprang to his feet, dived for his wand, spun around. "Hagrid!" He'd never been more glad to see the towering, burly figure of the half-giant gamekeeper- actually, he'd _never_ been glad to see him. Now, though, he was someone who could let Draco back into Hogwarts; some days Draco had wondered if anyone was closer to Dumbledore.

"We've been lookin' fer yeh," Hagrid said, staring hard at him from small, black eyes nearly hidden in the wealth of curly, black hair and beard.

"You have?"

"Didn' really want ter, o' course," the man continued in a low growl, pulling out a giant ring of keys from the pocket of his moleskin overcoat. "But Dumbledore said-"

"He knows I'm here?"

"Professor Snape thought yeh'd be on the way," Hagrid explained, now looking through his many keys. "Said yeh didn't Splinch. But o' course, yeh can't Apparate inter Hogwarts."

Of course! How could he have forgotten?

"An' with security as it is, yeh can hardly get in any other way either, 'cept on invitation. Dumbledore said yeh're ter be invited in, though, so-" Hagrid inserted a very small key into the bottom of the padlock and, turning it, the chains fell away from the gates.

Draco pushed them open, stepping between the boar-topped columns and onto the Hogwarts grounds- home. The smile pushing at his cheeks made his muscles ache from mere rarity of use. "Thanks, Hagrid."

"Don' thank me," Hagrid said brusquely, almost angrily, locking the gates behind Draco and beginning down the long slope of the drive to the castle. "I still think yeh're a rotten, spoiled scumbag. Besides, Dumbledore said ter let yeh inter the grounds. He wasn't specific as to what ter do with yeh next."

Draco, who had been jogging after Hagrid, froze. He'd realized it even just last night: Draco didn't deserve any kindness from anyone at Hogwarts, least of all Hagrid, whom he'd attacked without provocation almost from the moment he'd first stepped off the Hogwarts Express, maybe even as soon as he'd seen his bushy face through the window of Madam Malkin's robe shop the day he'd met Harry Potter. "Hagrid-" he began, but what could he say to possibly excuse his behavior?

Hagrid stopped too and turned to face him, his black eyes narrow and overlarge eyebrows low. "Look, Malfoy- yeh don' like me, an' I don' like you neither. Might be there's nothin' now that'll change that. Yeh know I don' think he ought ter have after what yeh did- goin' ter You-Know-Who and doin' who knows what- bu' Dumbledore said ter invite yeh in. Yeh haven't done nothin' yet ter make me hurt yeh, so I'm not going ter. An' I think yeh know if you hurt anyone here, I'm not the on'y person you'll have ter worry about. We'll keep it at that for now."

"Thank you," Draco breathed. "I know I don't deserve-"

"Cut tha' snivelin'. Now, are yeh goin' ter follow me all the way to me cabin? What are yeh going ter do?"

It was an open invitation. He could do anything, anything at all. But Draco found the words coming to him, leaving his mouth, "I think I have to see Dumbledore."

Hagrid grunted.

"Where can I find him, Hagrid? You must know."

"Probably up in his office, but yeh won' be able ter get up there on yer own. Guess there's nothin' for it, is there? I'll have ter take yeh."

Hagrid began back down the slope and Draco tried to keep up. "What do you think he'll do to me, Hagrid? Dumbledore, I mean."

Hagrid gave him a sharp look. "Yeh askin' me fer comfort, Malfoy?"

"Yes."

Hagrid looked up toward the castle and said, "He's a great man, Dumbledore, the very bes'. Probably he'll give yeh a second chance. Yeh'd just bes' be sure yeh deserve it."

"But Hagrid, I don't."

"Yeh migh' if yeh don' blow this un. Tha's all Dumbledore'll ask."

Hagrid led him down the hill, past the tufts of new grasses, sprigs of little, white snowdrops, past his own wooden cabin.

Hagrid was watching Draco from the corner of his eye. "Yeh migh' want ter clean up a bi'?"

Draco shook his head mutely, watching the muddy path beneath his feet, the great footprints made by Hagrid's boots, slowly filling with water.

They past the lake, which Draco found himself turning away from; its black waters mirrored his thoughts- dark nights and black masks, white faces and flashes of green.

The grounds turned up not long after that, a long line of steps forming the spine of the cliff that held the castle high above the surrounding area, nearer the bronze mountains beyond Hogsmeade. He soon shed his heavy cloak, bowing to the warmer, English weather and the steepness of the climb. The stairs had never seemed so long, Draco thought, as they reached the oaken front doors and he looked back the way he had come. Students were leaving in twos and threes from the greenhouses nestled halfway up the steep steps.

"Come on," Hagrid said, holding open the door.

Draco ducked beneath his arm.

Classes had just let out. Students were issuing from the dungeons and Potions into the flagstone entrance hall, were descending the marble staircase, books in their arms. The whole place seemed brighter than he had remembered, the gem-filled hourglasses in the corner glittering as sunlight streamed through the castle from the great glass clock face floors above. The students were all smiling, chatting, laughing and Draco moved toward them feeling more like a ghost, like the Bloody Baron, than anything else, so distant, so alien-

Hagrid passed him and cut a path for him through the students as he began to climb the marble steps. Several of the students broke off cheerful conversations to gawk at Draco as he passed; Draco did his best to keep his eyes fastened on Hagrid's broad shoulders.

"Is that...?"

"You know, I think it might be."

"What's _he_ doing here?"

"Didn't he go off to join the Death Eaters?"

"Hi, Hagrid."

"Hello, Ginny."

There was a sharp gasp and Draco looked around to meet Ginerva Weasley's dark glower, looking so much like her older brother that Draco wanted to flinch. Her hand started to inch toward her pocket.

"I'm taking him to Dumbledore, Ginny," Hagrid said in a low voice.

Weasley snorted. "You ought to knock him out cold first, Hagrid. Or let me do it. I know some really good curses."

Hagrid chuckled. "Maybe some other time, Ginny."

"But Hagrid!"

"I think I can handle him."

Weasley's dark eyes narrowed again. "Fine. Come on, Kari. Alana!"

One of Weasley's friends had been trying to get a better look at Draco; Draco was avoiding her curious eyes, looking the other direction, but heard her "Coming!" and then the scurry of her feet, and as she caught up to her friends, "Why's he all covered in mud?"

Weasley replied, "It suits him. Reflects the inside."

Draco grimaced.

They hadn't made it even so far as the second storey when they were accosted again. "Hi, Hagrid!"

Draco stiffened, stopping this time before Hagrid did, his head jerking up at the familiar voice. The hallways were emptier now as people found their classrooms and the stragglers were clearly visible: Potter was leading Ronald Weasley with his obnoxiously red hair and the Mudblood Granger down the flight of steps toward Hagrid and Draco. Draco shuffled nearer the banister, hoping Hagrid's generous girth would hide him from the eyes of the trio. He had hoped he would feel something different when he next saw them, had hoped that, being hunted by the Dark Lord himself, he would feel some sort of odd connection to the Boy-Who-Lived. All he felt was the same hot anger coursing through his veins at the face that was more sharply angled now, but was nevertheless so open as to be boyish. Potter had taken so much from him, had handed him over to so much sh-

"What are you doing in-" Potter began asking Hagrid, but then those green eyes met Draco's and narrowed in like hatred. Draco saw Potter's hand dive toward his pocket and mimicked the motion, his fingers brushing the still cool wood of his wand. He would draw it if he had to, if Potter drew his. He watched Potter calculating the risk.

"Malfoy?" Weasley sounded as outraged as Potter was, but Draco didn't remove his eyes from Potter's; Potter was the greater threat. Perhaps Weasley noticed he was being ignored because his next question was for the gamekeeper. "Where'd you find him, Hagrid? He looks like he's been wallowing in some pigsty."

"That the best you can do, Weasley?" Draco wanted to know.

"I could tell you the pigs probably liked you better than anyone will here?"

Draco laughed, unimpressed, but thinking he heard a low chuckle from Hagrid as well, quickly exchanged it for a frown.

"Where did you find him, Hagrid?" Granger asked again.

"Up at the gates. I'm bringin' him to-"

"I don't care where you found him," Potter said quietly. "I just want to know why you didn't leave him there."

"Dumbledore sent me ter look fer him, Harry."

"Why?"

"Why? I, er-"

"Dumbledore will have his reasons, Harry," Granger said, laying a hand on his shoulder, trying to lower it perhaps from his ear.

"Oh? Like he has a reason for trusting Snape? Like he has a reason for not talking to me for a whole bloody year?"

"You and Dumbledore aren't talking?" Draco repeated, surprised. Potter had always been Dumbledore's special, favored child.

Potter's face twisted in a snarl. "If we've been talking or not- it's none of your business, Malfoy."

"What did you possibly do to lose Dumbledore's-"

Potter whipped his wand from his pocket and, in a stride, had it in Draco's face. It shook in his anger.

"Steady on there!" Hagrid cried.

Draco was a second behind him, drawing his own wand and taking a step back; from that distance there could be no aiming.

"Hey!" Hagrid boomed. "Harry, Malfoy- put 'em away. Come on now."

"Scared?" Potter wanted to know.

"Hardly. Getting a better angle."

"Oh Harry, don't. He isn't worth it," Granger said at his elbow.

"Hermione, Hagrid won't turn me in and neither will you or Ron. I ought to take this opportunity to curse this rat so badly he won't be able to bring one scrap back to Voldemort."

Draco flinched at the name, knew they'd all seen him cower. Wearily, resigned, he asked, "Potter, what are you on ab-"

"You're here as a spy. Admit it."

"Potter, this is hardly the place for a criminal trial."

"Maybe not, but at least here your father can't jangle his pockets and get you out of it."

Draco had to fight not to flinch again. His father wouldn't be coming for him any longer, not after what he'd just done. He lowered his wand. "Potter-"

"Standing down already? I would have thought Voldemort would train his rat better."

"I'm not a spy!"

"Then," Granger interrupted, "why _are_ you here? Because Harry's reason makes sense."

"I'm here to see Dumbledore, that's all _you_ have to know," Draco glared. _Idiots. Prying, nosy-_

"No, because once you get to Dumbledore you could curse him," Harry growled. "Maybe."

"I won't."

"Harry, Dumbledore I think wanted ter see him. Why else would he have me lookin' fer him? An' besides, I don' think he can get past Dumbledore if it comes ter a duel. An' I'll be there."

_He will?_ Draco didn't like the idea of an audience.

Potter turned his green eyes on Hagrid, considering.

"Go on," the gamekeeper told him. "I'll look after him. He can't get a curse pas' me. There's advantages ter bein' half-gian'."

"All right," Potter agreed. "But know-" his gaze swung back to singe Draco and he jabbed his wand inches nearer "-you do one thing to hurt anyone here and I swear I'll-"

"Curse me into a slug," Draco filled in, feigning boredom in place of the flicker of fear; the wand tip was so near his heart. "I've got it, Potter."

"Good," he said, withdrawing his wand, but keeping his fist, knuckles white, tight on it. "Hagrid, hurry up and get him to Dumbledore. I'll feel better once he's there. Ron, Hermione, let's go."

"See you, mudhead," Weasley called as they left. "Maybe."

"He's been trying to come up with that this whole time," Draco opined, muttering and shaking his head as he watched Weasley and Granger jog down the marble stairs after a storming Potter.

"Yeh could say thank you," Hagrid said.

"For what?"

"For stoppin'- Never mind. Come on," Hagrid growled, starting up the stairs again. Draco followed him. "Yeh bett'r no' be," the half-giant added after they had gained the second storey.

"Better not be what?" Draco was already beginning to fret over what he would say, what he would do when faced with the headmaster. He was remembering the vision the Dark Lord had shown him, Dumbledore burning with fury and building power, wand tip at Draco's knight-bound throat as-

"Spyin'. If yeh are-"

"I told them, I'm not."

Hagrid grunted and stopped before a tall gargoyle, wings spread, sitting hunched in upon itself, perhaps preparing to spring. It did not look horribly unfriendly; its growl hid a smile. But of course, Draco corrected himself, the Dark Lord had smiled too, even- especially on the hunt.

Hagrid leaned in toward the statue and muttered, obviously trying to keep the password from Draco, "Licorice wand."

At Hagrid's words, the gargoyle leapt to life, sashaying aside as the wall behind it split and slowly the two halves opened outward to accept Hagrid and Draco, watching from behind the gamekeeper. A great spiral staircase ground into life, turning, steps moving upward toward an unseen storey. Hagrid pushed Draco in front of him, making him stumble past the bowing gargoyle, who Draco definitely thought of as sneering now. He got on one of the steps. It was an odd sensation, to be on a moving stair, unable to climb up or down without feeling unbalanced, moving without moving. The thudding shut of the halves of the wall only increased the writhing of Draco's stomach, the sudden pant in his breath. He looked back to see that the wall had sealed itself seamlessly behind Hagrid. Draco was locked inside now, no choice but to go forward. He recalled suddenly the door shut behind his father, the stifling darkness of the Dark Lord's office, the sharp coldness of his fingers dragging at Draco's chin, holding him still, trapped.

He was recalled to the present by a banging series of knocks. Hagrid had wrapped his fingers around the outside and whole of a door knocker. By looking up beneath his thick, hairy arm, Draco could see a darkened bronze griffin looking down at him, a snack.

"Enter."

Hagrid pushed the door open and Draco blinked in the light. The back wall of Dumbledore's office was nearly all windows. The morning sun gleamed on what must have been nearly a hundred interesting objects of silver and gold arranged on the glass-fronted shelves of cabinets that encompassed the room and a number of spindly-legged tables, whirring and tinkling and occasionally letting off a pop, bang, or puff of smoke. The light created glares on the oil paintings that were crowded onto the upper half of the wall.

"Ah."

Dumbledore himself, his silver hair and waist-length beard seeming to glow as well in the light, was seated behind an intricately carved oaken desk, a newspaper splayed out before him. He adjusted his half-moon spectacles and Draco found himself again beneath the penetrating blue stare, as he had been caught that night last June, and he froze beneath it.

"Hagrid," Dumbledore said gently, removing Draco momentarily from his gaze, leaving him trembling. "Thank you for finding him. Will you leave us now?"

"Professor Dumbledore," Hagrid quickly argued, "I really do think-"

"No, Hagrid," Dumbledore smiled, "I'm sure Draco and I shall both be fine."

"But if he's a trait-"

"Hagrid," Dumbledore cut across the word. "Please."

Hagrid hesitated. "Jus' be careful, Professor. Wand out and all that."

Dumbledore smiled at him and said again, "Thank you, Hagrid."

The gamekeeper shut the oaken door behind himself and Draco found himself alone with the Hogwarts headmaster. Dumbledore's blue eyes found his again, but there was a smile on the headmaster's lips. "Sit, Draco," he said, gesturing toward a cushioned chair in front of his desk.

Draco shook his head, mutely, too scared to speak. He knew what he had to do. He had read a book once on dueling. Dumbledore raised one white eyebrow, watching him.

Draco drew his wand and sank down to his knees where he was by the shut door. He bent forward in a bow, extending his arms, one hand closed on his wand's handle and the other around the tip so that it could not be fired without hurting himself. He let it go, then shunted it away, toward Dumbledore, beyond his reach. The book hadn't mentioned how hard it was to watch your wand roll away from you, to let it go. He pushed himself back to a kneeling position then shut his eyes tight, not wanting to see what would happen when he said, "If you strike, strike true."

"Draco-"

His was shivering now and moisture was gathering again beneath his shut lids, being pushed downward and-

"Draco," Dumbledore said again.

Draco waited. He heard the headmaster push back his chair. At least he would take the words seriously, would come closer and shorten the wait between when Dumbledore said the words and-

"Open your eyes, Draco."

He was going to make him watch! Draco obeyed though. What else could he do while on his knees, unarmed?

Dumbledore stood not far from him and he was holding Draco's wand, his own hand around the tip.

"It's all right," Dumbledore said quietly. "I don't intend to hurt you."

"But the Dark Lord said-"

"Voldemort-" Draco flinched "-says many things. But that does not make them true. Take your wand, Draco, and stand up."

Draco did, staring at Dumbledore; the sunlight crafted a halo for him from the loose wisps of his white hair and beard.

A chirrup answered the headmaster, as if to agree, pure as a note plucked from the finest harp. Draco looked around, feeling the note shiver through him, making his own fibers vibrate to its tune. It was warm as the first sip of hot cocoa, spread to his fingers. A red and gold plumed bird sat on a golden perch beside the door, not far behind him. It regarded him with eyes bright as obsidian. Draco felt the corners of his mouth lift as the phoenix sang another note.

"Come sit, Draco." Draco, prying his eyes from the bird, saw that Dumbledore's eyebrows had drawn together, the corners of his mouth had turned down. "Have a cup of tea." The headmaster did not demand, but request and Draco yielded, given the choice. "You look dead on your feet. Or," Dumbledore corrected himself with a quirk, "you do from what little bit of you I can see beneath the mud."

"I forgot you can't Apparate into Hogwarts," Draco admitted, sheepish, as he followed Dumbledore back toward his desk. "I was so concentrated on getting out... Are you sure you want me to sit?" Draco added, gesturing toward the upholstery.

"There are spells to remove stains. Please." Dumbledore picked up a blackened kettle tapped it with his wand so that it issued a spurt of steam.

Draco sat down and watched him as he added several leaves to large mugs he conjured from no where and poured the water atop them. He passed Draco the first cup, and Draco accepted it silently, still watching him.

Dumbledore took the second and returned to his chair across the desk. Settling himself, his eye caught Draco's stare, grinning. "Well, Draco. I did not ask you up here, so why is it that I have the pleasure of welcoming you to my office? Or was that thoughtful but highly unnecessary display of surrender it?"

Draco looked into the mug between his hands, into the dark tea that was brewing there. The brown color swirled and drew pictures of all he had encountered. The tea began to lap at the ceramic wall and Draco found a lump of heavy words congealing, burning in his throat.

His silence left audible the whisper of feathers and then the soft _fwump_ as the phoenix landed on Dumbledore's desk. It inched nearer Draco, extending its swanlike neck till it caught his stinging eye, then it dipped its long beak into his mug.

Draco smiled at it and wondered if he would have done so eight months ago. He stretched out a hand and ran it down the bird's neck; the feathers were smooth as silk and surprisingly warm.

"I think I've come here to confess. And," Draco added, mumbling, his fingers digging somewhat into the bird's plumage, "to beg your forgiveness."

"Both noble pursuits," Dumbledore prompted.

"Yes... Professor, I- Where do I begin?"

"Anywhere you like. One usually starts at the beginning, but perhaps for you it would be easiest to work backward?"

Draco tried to hide the grin that was inexplicably growing. "All right." Draco thought. "I got out. Or, I think I have. I meant to," he told the tea.

"Got out of what?"

"The Death Eaters. Out from under the Dark Lord. But I think I've lost my father's affection in the process, whatever there was of it to lose. I won't be able to go back after this. And I'm out of chances with the Dark Lord as well. He doesn't like traitors." Draco flinched to apply the word to himself.

"So I'm a last resort?" But Dumbledore's blue eyes still twinkled behind his glasses.

Draco admitted, surprised by the fact, "No. You're the choice I ought to have realized was here before now. Or I hope you are."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows in question.

"I've done everything to deserve your refusal-"

"Instead, let us say, you were chasing approval from others."

It was true, so Draco couldn't dispute the phrase. "Yes, well. Now I'll chase yours if that's what you want from me. I've spent time inside the Dark Lord's headquarters and he-" a razor finger running along the side of his face, red eyes searching his, a soft frown, and a voice cooing, _"My Draco"_- "wasn't distant with me. I know you're connected with the Order of the Phoenix. I think I could be of use. My father was- he told the Dark Lord I had to be- punished- swiftly. He said I was in too deep, that no one knew how much information I had gathered."

"Draco," Dumbledore said gently.

Draco shook his head, took a great gulp from the tea mug. "I think he was right. I have information. I think if you asked me, I could find you answers and you could-"

"I don't need information from you, Draco."

Draco looked up.

"If one day you can give it of your own free will-"

Draco fought the whine in his voice, "I'm offering it to you."

"But as a bargain. What is you want from me, Draco?"

"I have no where else to go," Draco told the headmaster. "And anywhere I go, I think they might hunt me. Potter- well, you try and keep him safe here and it works some of the time- he's still alive, at any rate."

"I do nothing for him I would not do for another student."

"Will you do it for me?"

"You want my protection?"

"No. I need it."

Dumbledore looked at him. His piercing gaze traveled up and down Draco, along his arm to his phoenix, who looked back at the headmaster with a cocked head.

"Then you will have it."

"Just like that?"

"Do you think you have no worth of your own, Draco?"

Draco looked into the tea, caught sight of his reflection, deep depressions, a nasty shade of purple beneath tired eyes half-veiled by lids he couldn't keep up. His hair, grown long, drooped forward. It and the too-pale face were smeared with mud. He knew what answer the headmaster wanted to his question but Draco didn't think a negative really applied, so he kept silent, but so did Dumbledore; he expected some reply. Draco fished for one. "The Dark Lord thought I did," Draco admitted. "Or I thought, sometimes- he made it sound as if-" Draco's stomach twisted, grew heavier within him, realizing that, in the end, not even the Dark Lord had found him anything more than a tool. _"What use has anyone for a broken wand?"_

"Not Voldemort's answer, Draco; yours."

Draco recovered from his shudder to look up at him through blonde bangs. His heart felt warped in his chest, a twisted thing like one of Longbottom's melted cauldrons. "You don't want my answer, sir."

"On the contrary, Draco." The headmaster laced his fingers and leaned forward to rest his hidden chin on the bridge they made between his propped elbows. "I think you don't want your answer. Whatever it is seems to be eating you alive. We will need to work on that. But, I think, not tonight. Tonight I think you ought to wash up, then go along to Madam Pomfery for a night of dreamless sleep. I shall tell her you are coming. You remember the way?"

Draco nodded, willing now to accept any dictums the headmaster placed on him. But- "Sir? There's something I'd like to do first."

"Oh?"

"Do you know the house-elf Dobby?"

Dumbledore's beard twitched in a grin, eyes twinkling.

_A/N: Hmm... this one got rather long. I was so excited to be writing Harry/Draco spats again that it just sort of... kept going. And then I felt as if there's so much Dumbledore _could_ say and so much Draco ought to. I hope it didn't ramble. I would like to say again though, brownie points to anyone who can find the oblique Biblical reference in this chapter... darn, I've just revealed my brownie point culture. Well, feel educated. I regret to inform you, this is the end. But not the true end, for in addition to this story, there are also two sequels to it. :) The first is called __Tapestries Tear__ and relates Draco's trials at Hogwarts. I hope, if you enjoyed this story, you might think to take pleasure there as well. The second is called_ _And Then There Were Nine__. I sha'n't tell you the plot line of that one here in case you decide to read __Tapestries Tear__ first; to do so would ruin the ending of that book. So, in sum, cheers! Thank you so much for reading my story!_

_Yours forever, Tsona_


End file.
